On decay properties of solutions of the k-generalized KdV equations

We prove special decay properties of solutions to the initial value problem associated to the $k$-generalized Korteweg-de Vries equation. These are related with persistence properties of the solution flow in weighted Sobolev spaces and with sharp unique continuation properties of solutions to this equation. As application of our method we also obtain results concerning the decay behavior of perturbations of the traveling wave solutions as well as results for solutions corresponding to special data.