Null controllability for the dissipative semilinear heat equation (Q1401580)

The authors study the exact null controllability for the semilinear heat equation in a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^n\). The nonlinearity \(f\) is assumed to be Lipschitz continuous and dissipative. Even if \(f\) is mildly superlinear, the global controllability fails. More precisely the authors derive precise estimates for the control time \(T\) in terms of the \({\mathcal L}^2\)-norm of the initial data. The proof uses a comparison argument for the corresponding linear problem.