Carleman inequalities for parabolic equations in Sobolev spaces of negative order and exact controllability for semilinear parabolic equations (Q1425471)

Summary: We prove Carleman inequalities for a second order parabolic equation when the lower coefficients are not bounded and norms of right hand sides are taken in the Sobolev space \(L_2(0,T; W^{-l}_2(\Omega)), l\in [0,1]\). Our Carleman inequality yields the unique continuation for \(L_2\)-solutions. We further apply these inequalities to the global exact zero controllability of a semilinear parabolic equation whose semilinear term also contains derivatives of first order of solutions and is of sublinear growth at the infinity.