  The optimality of decay properties of the one-dimensional damped wave
equations with potentials belonging to a certain class is discussed. The
typical ingredient is a variant of Nash inequality which involves an invariant
measure for the corresponding Schr\"odinger semigroup. This enables us to find
a sharp decay estimate from above. Moreover, the use of a test function method
with the Nash-type inequality provides the decay estimate from below. The
diffusion phenomena for the damped wave equations with potentials are also
considered.
