The thesis consists of two parts, a theoretical part and an applied part, and in addition an Appendix. Except for a very short chapter in the applied part and the appendix we only present previously unknown results leading to a very concise style. In the theoretical part we study rates of decay for vector-valued functions and semigroups of operators depending on a real and positive variable. Under boundedness assumptions on the function/semigroup itself and under analytic extendability assumptions of its Laplace transform/resolvent across the imaginary axis we provide (almost) sharp rates of decay. Our results improve known results in this very active area of research. In the second part of the thesis we apply our results to specific examples (from the field of PDEs): local energy decay for wave equations on exterior domains, energy decay for damped wave equations on bounded domains and decay for a viscoelastic boundary damping model for sound waves. Many more examples can be found in the vast literature.

Spectral properties of linear operators and operator functions can be used to analyze models in nature. When dispersion and damping are taken into account, the dependence of the spectral parameter is in general non-linear and the operators are not selfadjoint. In this thesis non-selfadjoint operator functions are studied and several methods for obtaining properties of unbounded non-selfadjoint operator functions are presented. Equivalence is used to characterize operator functions since two equivalent operators share many significant characteristics such as the spectrum and closeness. Methods of linearization and other types of equivalences are presented for a class of unbounded operator matrix functions. To study properties of the spectrum for non-selfadjoint operator functions, the numerical range is a powerful tool. The thesis introduces an optimal enclosure of the numerical range of a class of unbounded operator functions. The new enclosure can be computed explicitly, and it is investigated in detail. Many properties of the numerical range such as the number of components can be deduced from the enclosure. Furthermore, it is utilized to prove the existence of an infinite number of eigenvalues accumulating to specific points in the complex plane. Among the results are proofs of accumulation of eigenvalues to the singularities of a class of unbounded rational operator functions. The enclosure of the numerical range is also used to find optimal and computable estimates of the norm of resolvent and a corresponding enclosure of the ε-pseudospectrum.

The thesis consists of two parts, a theoretical part and an applied part, and in addition an Appendix. Except for a very short chapter in the applied part and the appendix we only present previously unknown results leading to a very concise style. In the theoretical part we study rates of decay for vector-valued functions and semigroups of operators depending on a real and positive variable. Under boundedness assumptions on the function/semigroup itself and under analytic extendability assumptions of its Laplace transform/resolvent across the imaginary axis we provide (almost) sharp rates of decay. Our results improve known results in this very active area of research. In the second part of the thesis we apply our results to specific examples (from the field of PDEs): local energy decay for wave equations on exterior domains, energy decay for damped wave equations on bounded domains and decay for a viscoelastic boundary damping model for sound waves. Many more examples can be found in the vast literature.:Part 1 Quantified Tauberian theorems and decay of C0-semigroups 1 Decay of vector-valued functions 2 Optimal decay for C0-semigroups on Hilbert spaces Part 2 Applications: decay of waves 3 Local decay for waves in exterior domains 4 Waves on a square with constant damping on a strip 5 A viscoelastic boundary damping model