Interior control of waves on time dependent domains (Q2166405)

The author addresses distributed control problem for \((n+1)\)-dimensional wave equations of the form \begin{align*} & -\partial^2_{tt}y + \Delta_x y -\nabla_{\chi}y +qu = F\mathbf{1}_W, && \text{ on } \mathcal{U},\\ & (y,\partial_t y) = (y_0^-,y_1^-), && \text{ at initial time},\\ & y = 0, && \text{ on }\partial \mathcal{U}, \end{align*} on time-dependent domains \(\mathcal{U}\) of the form \[ \mathcal{U} = \bigcup_{\tau \in \mathbb{R}} \left( \{\tau\} \times \Omega_\tau \right), \] where each \(\Omega_\tau\in \mathbb{R}^n\) is an open and bounded domain, and they vary smoothly along \(\tau\). Here \((y_0^-,y_1^-)\in L^2 \times H^{-1}\), \(\chi\in C^{\infty}(\overline{\mathcal{U}}; \mathbb{R}^{n+1})\) is a vector field, \(q\in C^{\infty} (\overline{\mathcal{U})}\) is the potential, \(W\subset \mathcal{U}\) is an interior subset, \(\mathbf{1}_W\) denotes the characteristic function of \(W\), and \(F\) is the control function. The control problem is the following one: given \((y_0^\pm,y_1^\pm)\in L^2 \times H^{-1}\), find control function \(F\) such that the solution of the wave equation satisfies \((y,\partial_t y) = (y_0^+,y_1^+)\) at final time. The author solves the control problem given above using a new Carleman estimate and the controllability-observability duality. The novelty of the paper is that the control region can be chosen smaller than in previous results, as it can be further restricted to a cone in the Minkowski space \(\mathbb{R}^{1+n}\) and that there is no assumption of time-analyticity for the coefficients in the wave equation.