Propagation of smallness and control for heat equations (Q6160170)

Summary: In this note we investigate propagation of smallness properties for solutions to heat equations. We consider spectral projector estimates for the Laplace operator with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions on a Riemanian manifold with or without boundary. We show that using the new approach for the propagation of smallness of \textit{A. Logunov} and \textit{E. Malinnikova} [in: Proceedings of the international congress of mathematicians 2018, ICM 2018, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 1--9, 2018. Volume III. Invited lectures. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific; Rio de Janeiro: Sociedade Brasileira de Matemática (SBM). 2391--2411 (2018; Zbl 1453.35061)] allows one to extend the spectral projector type estimates of \textit{D. Jerison} and \textit{G. Lebeau} [in: Harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Essays in honor of Alberto P. Calderón's 75th birthday. Proceedings of a conference, University of Chicago, IL, USA, February 1996. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 223--239 (1999; Zbl 0946.35055)] from localisation on open sets to localization on arbitrary sets of non-zero Lebesgue measure; we can actually go beyond and consider sets of non-vanishing \(d - \delta\) (\(\delta > 0\) small enough) Hausdorff measure. We show that these new spectral projector estimates allow one to extend Logunov-Malinnikova's propagation of smallness results to solutions to heat equations. Finally, we apply these results to the null controllability of heat equations with controls localized on sets of positive Lebesgue measure. The main novelty here is that we can drop the constant coefficient assumptions of \textit{J. Apraiz} and \textit{L. Escauriaza} [ESAIM, Control Optim. Calc. Var. 19, No. 1, 239--254 (2013; Zbl 1262.35118); J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 16, No. 11, 2433--2475 (2014; Zbl 1302.93040)] on the Laplace operator (or the analyticity assumption of \textit{L. Escauriaza} et al. [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 49, No. 5, 4064--4092 (2017; Zbl 1377.35048)] and \textit{G. Lebeau} and \textit{I. Moyano} [``Spectral inequalities for the Schrödinger operator'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1901.03513}]) and deal with Lipschitz coefficients. Another important novelty is that we get the first (non-one-dimensional) exact controllability results with controls supported on measure zero sets.