In this paper, a compressible viscous-dispersive Euler system in one space dimension in the context of quantum hydrodynamics is considered. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it is shown that the system is locally well-posed. For that purpose, the existence of classical solutions which are perturbation of constant states is established. Second, it is proved that in the particular case of subsonic equilibrium states, sufficiently small perturbations decay globally in time. In order to prove this stability property, the linearized system around the subsonic state is examined. Using an appropriately constructed compensating matrix symbol in the Fourier space, it is proved that solutions to the linear system decay globally in time, underlying a dissipative mechanism of regularity gain type. These linear decay estimates, together with the local existence result, imply the global existence and the decay of perturbations to constant subsonic equilibrium states as solutions to the full nonlinear system.
