On the propagation of confined waves along the geodesics (Q923246)

From the problem of exact controllability for the wave equation, the author is led to the initial-boundary value problem for the wave equation as follows: \[ (*)\quad \partial^ 2u/\partial t^ 2-\Delta u=0\text{ in } (0,T)\times \Omega;\quad u(t,x)=0\text{ on } (0,T)\times \partial \Omega, \] \[ u(0,x)=\phi (x),\quad (\partial u/\partial t)(0,x)=\psi (x)\text{ on } \{t=0\}, \] where \(\phi (x)\in H^ 1_ 0(\Omega)\) and \(\psi (x)\in L^ 2(\Omega)\). Here he defines a semi-norm p for the initial data (\(\phi\),\(\psi\)) by \[ p(\phi,\psi)=(\int^{T}_{0}\int_{\omega}| u(t,x)|^ 2 dt dx)^{1/2}, \] where u(t,x) is the solution of (*) and \(\omega\subset \Omega\) a subdomain. For some t, this semi-norm p becomes a norm of \(H^ 1_ 0(\Omega)\times L^ 2(\Omega)\). The question is to determine the minimal value of T for which p is the norm. A. Haraux has given an estimate on T, though his result is not yet published. The aim of this paper is to give some examples of domains in which the estimate of Haraux is sharp. It is yet an open problem whether or not the above estimate is sharp for a general domain.