Sparse optimal control of a quasilinear elliptic PDE in measure spaces (Q6074826)

The article deals with an optimal control problem for a quasilinear elliptic partial differential equation. The cost is given by a mix of the distance to target (with respect to the \(L^2\) norm) and the cost of the control. The key novelty is given exactly by the choice of the cost: the control can be a measure, and the cost is its norm (as the dual of \(C^0\), i.e. its mass). This can be seen as a cost enforcing sparsity, i.e. small support of the control. The article provides interesting first- and second-order conditions for optimality. After studying well-posedness of the problem and differentiablity of the control-to-state map, it provides first-order conditions with the standard appoach of adjoint variables. This is surprising, due to the peculiar sparsity condition.