Insensitizing controls for a semilinear heat equation with a superlinear nonlinearity (Q1860654)

The authors consider the following semilinear heat equation: \[ \begin{cases} \partial_t y-\Delta y+f(y)=\xi+v1_\omega\text{ in }Q,\\y=0\text{ on }\sum,\quad y(0)=y_0+\tau\widehat y_0\text{ in }\Omega,\end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^N\) is a bounded domain, \(N\geq 1\), \(f\) is a \(C^1\) function defined on \(\mathbb{R}\), \(Q=\Omega\times (0,T)\), \(\Sigma=\partial\Omega\times (0,T)\) and \(\omega\) is an open subset of \(\Omega\). Here \(\xi\in L^2(\Omega)\), \(y_0\in L^2(\Omega)\) are given, \(\widehat y_0\in L^2(\Omega)\) is unknown with \(\|\widehat y_0\|_{L^2(\Omega)}=1\), \(\tau\) is small unknown real number and \(v\in L^2(Q)\) is a control function to be determined, with \(1_\omega\) the characteristic function of \(\omega\). The authors prove the existence of control insensitizing the \(L^2\)-norm of the observation of the solution in an open subset \(\mathcal O\) of the considered domain under appropriate assumptions on \(f(y)\) and \(\xi\).