Subdifferential inclusions with unbounded perturbation: existence and relaxation theorems (Q339966)

The evolution inclusion \[ -\dot{x}\in \partial \phi ^{t}(x)+U(t,x)\eqno{(1)} \] in a separable Hilbert space is considered, where \(\partial \phi ^{t}\) represents the subdifferential of the proper, convex, lower semicontinuous function \(\phi ^{t}\), along with the convexified version \[ -\dot{x}\in \partial \phi ^{t}(x)+\overline{\text{co}}U(t,x).\eqno{(2)} \] Existence of solutions is proven for (1) and the density of the solution set of (1) in the closure of the solution set of (2) is proven. The author notes that this latter property is often called ``relaxation,'' and that typically, compactness of \(\phi ^{t}\) and boundedness of the perturbation \(U\) are assumed for relaxation results, but those assumptions are not made here. These results are analogous to the finite-dimensional results found in [\textit{A. F. Filippov}, SIAM J. Control 5, 609--621 (1967; Zbl 0238.34010); translation from Vestnik Moskov. Univ., Ser. I 22, No. 3, 16--26 (1967)]. Assumptions are also specified for a perturbed polyhedral sweeping process so that by expressing the problems in the form (1) or (2), these results hold. \ Next, similar results are considered for the variational inequality \[ \varphi (x(t))-\varphi (z)\leq \left\langle \dot{x}(t)+u(t),z-x(t)\right\rangle \] where \(\varphi \) is proper, convex and lower semicontinuous, \(z\in \) dom \(\varphi \cap F(t)\), where the polyhedral mapping \(F\) is a time-dependent ``obstacle,'' subject to the constraint \(u(t)\in U(t,x(t))\) or \(u(t)\in \overline{\text{co}}U(t,x(t))\). Lastly, the author gives an example of an unbounded \(U\) which satisfies the assumptions specified in the results.