No label defined (Q4340925)

The paper studies the exact controllability of the wave equation in a non cylindrical domain \(\widehat Q\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). In fact, let \(\Omega\) be a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^n\); \(k(t)\) be of class \(C^1\) such that \(0<k(t) <\infty\) besides other supplementary assumptions; and \(\Omega_t\) be the extension or contraction of \(\Omega\) by \(k(t)\) times. The wave equation is described in \(\widehat Q= \cup_{0<t<T} \Omega_t \times \{t \}\) as \[ u_{tt}- \Delta u=0, \quad u|_{\partial \Omega_t\times \{t\}}=v, \quad u(\cdot,0) =u^0, \quad u_t(\cdot,0) =u^1. \] Here, \(v\) denotes a control function with its value equal to be 0 in a part of the boundary. By changing the space variable \(x\) into \(y=x/k(t)\), the wave equation is transformed into an equivalent one in the cylindrical domain \(Q=\Omega \times(0,T)\) with \(\Delta\) replaced by another elliptic operator of variable coefficients. Through this procedure, it is shown that there is a \(T_0>0\) such that the above wave equation is exactly controllable in \(T \geq T_0\), that is, for any initial value \((u^0,u^1)\) there is a control \(v\) such that \((u(\cdot,T),\;u_t (\cdot,T)) =(0,0)\).