The Carleman inequality and its application to periodic optimal control governed by semilinear parabolic differential equations (Q1422869)

The paper considers the optimal control problem \[ I= \int^T_0 g(t, y)\,dt+ \int^T_0 h(u)\,dt\to\text{min}, \] \[ y_t+ \text{div}(A(x, t)\nabla y)+ f(t,y)= u\quad\text{in }\Omega\times (0,T),\tag{1} \] \[ y=0\quad\text{on } \partial\Omega,\quad y(x,0)= y(x,T),\tag{2} \] \[ u\in L_2(0, T; L_2(\Omega)),\;y\in Y= W^{1,2}([0, T]; L_2(\Omega))\cap L_2(0,T; W^2(\Omega)), \] where the functional \(g: [0, T]\times Y\to[0,\infty)\) is Lipschitz in the second argument, \(h\) is a convex functional on \(L_2(\Omega)\), \(u\) is the control and \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^N\) is a bounded domain with \(C^\infty\) boundary \(\partial\Omega\). In the first part of the paper the authors obtain the Carleman inequality for the linearized equation (1) with the periodicity and boundary conditions (2). In the second part of the paper, by means of using the mollifying \(g\) and \(h\) with respect to \(y\), the penalty method and the passage to the limit, a necessary optimality condition in the form of the Pontryagin's maximum principle is obtained.