Interior degenerate/singular parabolic equations in nondivergence form: well-posedness and Carleman estimates (Q890194)

In this article, the author studies well-posedness and controllability properties of one-dimensional parabolic equations in non-divergence form with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions that is \[ \begin{alignedat}{2} & \partial_t u - a(x)\partial_x^2 u - \frac{\lambda}{b(x)}u = h(t,x)\chi_{\omega}(x) & \text{ in } & (0,T)\times (0,1),\\ & B u (0) = B u(1) =0 & \text{ in } & (0,T)\times (\{0\}\cup\{1\}),\\ & u(0,x) = u_0(x) & \text{ in }& \{0\}\times (0,1). \end{alignedat} \] Here, the coefficients \(a(x)\) and \(b(x)\) may vanish at a point \(x_0\in(0,1)\) in the interval. The function \(\chi_{\omega}\) is the characteristic function of a set \(\omega\subset (0,1)\) and \(h\in L^2((0,T); L^2((0,1), \frac{dx}{a(x)}))\). Typical examples of coefficients include for instance \(a(x)=|x-x_0|^{K_1}\) and \(b(x)=|x-x_0|^{K_2}\) for \(K_1, K_2\in(0,2)\). The article consists of two parts. The author first proves well-posedness results in appropriate function spaces and then proves Carleman estimates for the corresponding equations.