Solvability of an optimal control problem in coefficients for ill-posed elliptic boundary-value problems (Q2877653)

Based on authors' abstract: The authors of the article consider an Optimal Control Problem (OCP) for a linear elliptic equation with unbounded coefficients in the main part of the elliptic operator \(-\text{div}(A(x)\nabla y+C(x)\nabla y)=f\), where a symmetric positive matrix \(A(x)\) is adopted as a control in \(L^\infty(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^{N\times N})\). The characteristic feature of this control object is the fact that the matrix \(C(x)\) is skew-symmetric and belongs to the \(L^2\)-space (rather than \(L^\infty)\). Equations of this type can exhibit non-uniqueness of weak solutions.NEWLINENEWLINEThe authors study solvability of the OCPs and propose a scheme for their approximation. They prove that the corresponding OCP, under rather general assumptions on the class of admissible controls, is well-posed and admits a nonempty set of solutions. This is given if the following conditions are satisfied: the so-called non-triviality condition and the condition of closedness of the set of admissible controls. The main trick they apply for the proof of the existence result is the approximation of the original OCP by regularized OCPs in perforated domains with fictitious boundary controls on the holes.