On the exact internal controllability of a Petrowsky system (Q1900201)

The author investigates the so--called locally distributed exact controllability at time \(T>0\) of the plate equation \[ y''-\Delta^{2} y=\chi_{\omega}h ,\qquad \Omega\times (0,T), \] with boundary condition \(y=\Delta y=0\). Here \(\Omega\) is a Riemannian manifold, \(\Delta\) denotes its Laplace--Beltrami operator, and \(\omega\) is an open domain in \(\Omega\). Such a problem consists of finding, for any pair of initial conditions \(y_{0},y_{1}\), a control \(h\), supported in \(\omega\), steering the above systems to zero at time \(T\). If such a control exists, \(\omega\) is called a control domain for the system under consideration. Questions of this type are of deep interest in the theory of PDEs and of their applications, as described by \textit{J. L. Lions} [SIAM Rev. 30, No. 1, 1-68 (1988; Zbl 0644.49028)], who also introduced a general procedure to study these problems, known as Hilbert uniqueness method (HUM). Coupling HUM with inequalities of Ingham type to derive observability estimates, the author obtains some sharp results for particular choices of \(\Omega\). In particular, if \(\Omega\) is an \(n\)--dimensional open interval, then any non--empty open subset \(\omega\) is shown to be a control domain for the plate equation at any positive time. Moreover, if \(\Omega =S\) is an \(n\)--dimensional sphere, then the author proves that a sufficient condition for \(\omega\) to be a control domain (at an arbitrary positive time) is that every great circle of \(S\) meets \(\omega\).