A deterministic affine-quadratic optimal control problem is considered. Due to the nature of the problem, optimal controls exist under some very mild conditions. Further, it is shown that under some assumptions, the optimal control is unique which leads to the differentiability of the value function. Therefore, the value function satisfies the corresponding Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation in the classical sense, and the optimal control admits a state feedback representation. Under some additional conditions, it is shown that the value function is actually twice differentiable and the so-called quasi-Riccati equation is derived, whose solution can be used to construct the state feedback representation for the optimal control.

We consider the shape optimization problem \hbox{$\min\big\{\E(\Gamma)\ :\ \Gamma\in\A,\ \H^1(\Gamma)=l\\big\},$}min{ℰ(Γ):Γ ∈ 𝒜,ℋ1(Γ) = l}, where ℋ1 is the one-dimensional Hausdorffmeasure and𝒜is an admissible class of one-dimensional setsconnecting some prescribed set of points \hbox{$\D=\{D_1,\dots,D_k\}\subset\R^d$}𝒟 =  { D1,...,Dk }  ⊂ Rd. The cost functional ℰ(Γ) is theDirichlet energy of Γ defined through the Sobolev functions onΓ vanishing on the pointsDi. We analyze the existence of a solutionin both the families of connected sets and of metric graphs. At the end, several explicitexamples are discussed.

We generalize to the p-LaplacianΔp a spectral inequality proved by M.-T.Kohler−Jobin. As a particular case of such a generalization, we obtain a sharp lower boundon the first Dirichlet eigenvalue of Δp of aset in terms of its p-torsional rigidity. The result is valid in everyspace dimension, for every1 < p < ∞ and for every openset with finite measure. Moreover, it holds by replacing the first eigenvalue with moregeneral optimal Poincaré-Sobolev constants. The method of proof is based on ageneralization of the rearrangement technique introduced by Kohler−Jobin.

The research on a class of asymptotic exit-time problems with a vanishing Lagrangian, begun in [M. Motta and C. Sartori, Nonlinear Differ. Equ. Appl. Springer (2014).] for the compact control case, is extended here to the case of unbounded controls and data, including both coercive and non-coercive problems. We give sufficient conditions to have a well-posed notion of generalized control problem and obtain regularity, characterization and approximation results for the value function of the problem.

Several kinds of exact synchronizations and the generalized exact synchronization areintroduced for a coupled system of 1-D wave equations with various boundary conditions andwe show that these synchronizations can be realized by means of some boundarycontrols.

In this paper, we investigate the controllability of an underwater vehicle immersed in an infinite volume of an inviscid fluid whose flow is assumed to be irrotational. Taking as control input the flow of the fluid through a part of the boundary of the rigid body, we obtain a finite-dimensional system similar to Kirchhoff laws in which the control input appears through both linear terms (with time derivative) and bilinear terms. Applying Coron’s return method, we establish some local controllability results for the position and velocities of the underwater vehicle. Examples with six, four, or only three controls inputs are given for a vehicle with an ellipsoidal shape.

This paper is concerned with the internal distributed control problem for the 1D Schrödinger equation, i ut(x,t) = −uxx+α(x) u+m(u) u, that arises in quantum semiconductor models. Here m(u) is a non local Hartree–type nonlinearity stemming from the coupling with the 1D Poisson equation, and α(x) is a regular function with linear growth at infinity, including constant electric fields. By means of both the Hilbert Uniqueness Method and the contraction mapping theorem it is shown that for initial and target states belonging to a suitable small neighborhood of the origin, and for distributed controls supported outside of a fixed compact interval, the model equation is controllable. Moreover, it is shown that, for distributed controls with compact support, the exact controllability problem is not possible.

We characterize quasi-static rate-independent evolutions, by means of their graph parametrization, in terms of a couple of equations: the first gives stationarity while the second provides the energy balance. An abstract existence result is given for functionals ℱ of class C1 in reflexive separable Banach spaces. We provide a couple of constructive proofs of existence which share common features with the theory of minimizing movements for gradient flows. Moreover, considering a sequence of functionals ℱn and its Γ-limit ℱ we provide, under suitable assumptions, a convergence result for the associated quasi-static evolutions. Finally, we apply this approach to a phase field model in brittle fracture.

In this article, given a reference feasible trajectory of an optimal control problem, we say that the quadratic growth property for bounded strong solutions holds if the cost function of the problem has a quadratic growth over the set of feasible trajectories with a bounded control and with a state variable sufficiently close to the reference state variable. Our sufficient second-order optimality conditions in Pontryagin form ensure this property and ensure a fortiori that the reference trajectory is a bounded strong solution. Our proof relies on a decomposition principle, which is a particular second-order expansion of the Lagrangian of the problem.

We prove Hölder regularity of the gradient, up to the boundary for solutions of somefully-nonlinear, degenerate elliptic equations, with degeneracy coming from thegradient.

The problem of distributing two conducting materials with a prescribed volume ratio in aball so as to minimize the first eigenvalue of an elliptic operator with Dirichletconditions is considered in two and three dimensions. The gap ε between the twoconductivities is assumed to be small (low contrast regime). The main result of the paperis to show, using asymptotic expansions with respect to ε and to small geometricperturbations of the optimal shape, that the global minimum of the first eigenvalue in lowcontrast regime is either a centered ball or the union of a centered ball and of acentered ring touching the boundary, depending on the prescribed volume ratio between thetwo materials.

A 3D-2D dimension reduction for −Δ1 is obtained. A power law approximation from −Δp as p → 1 in terms of Γ-convergence, duality and asymptotics for least gradient functions has also been provided.

In this paper we are concerned with questions of multiplicity and concentration behaviorof positive solutions of the elliptic problem

$$ (P_{\var})\hspace*{4cm} \left\{ \begin{array}{rcl} \mathcal{L}_{\var}u=f(u) \ \ \mbox{in} \ \ \R^{3},\\[1.5mm] u>0 \ \ \mbox{in} \ \ \R^{3},\\[1.5mm] u \in H^{1}(\R^3), \end{array} \right. $$$\mathrm{\left(}{\mathit{P}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\mathrm{\right)}\left\{\begin{array}{c}\\ {\mathrm{ℒ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\mathit{u}\mathrm{=}\mathit{f}\mathrm{\left(}\mathit{u}\mathrm{\right)}\mathrm{in}{\mathrm{IR}}^{\mathrm{3}}\mathit{,}\\ \mathit{u}\mathit{>}\mathrm{0}\mathrm{in}{\mathrm{IR}}^{\mathrm{3}}\mathit{,}\\ \mathit{u}\mathrm{\in }{\mathit{H}}^{\mathrm{1}}\mathrm{\left(}{\mathrm{IR}}^{\mathrm{3}}\mathrm{\right)}\mathit{,}\end{array}\right.$

where ε is a small positiveparameter, f : ℝ → ℝ is a continuous function, $$ \mathcal{L}_{\var} $$${\mathrm{ℒ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}$ is a nonlocaloperator defined by

$$ \mathcal{L}_{\var}u=M\left(\dis\frac{1}{\var}\int_{\R^{3}}|\nabla u|^{2}+\frac{1}{\var^{3}}\dis\int_{\R^{3}}V(x)u^{2}\right)\left[-\var^{2}\Delta u + V(x)u \right], $$${\mathrm{ℒ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\mathit{u}\mathrm{=}\mathit{M}\left(\frac{\mathrm{1}}{\mathit{\epsilon }}{\mathrm{\int }}_{{\mathrm{IR}}^{\mathrm{3}}}\mathrm{|}\mathrm{\nabla }\mathit{u}{\mathrm{|}}^{\mathrm{2}}\mathrm{+}\frac{\mathrm{1}}{{\mathit{\epsilon }}^{\mathrm{3}}}{\mathrm{\int }}_{{\mathrm{IR}}^{\mathrm{3}}}\mathit{V}\mathrm{(}\mathit{x}\mathrm{)}{\mathit{u}}^{\mathrm{2}}\right)\mathrm{[}\mathrm{-}{\mathit{\epsilon }}^{\mathrm{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }\mathit{u}\mathrm{+}\mathit{V}\mathrm{(}\mathit{x}\mathrm{)}{\mathit{u}}^{\mathrm{]}}\mathit{,}$

M : IR+ → IR+ andV : IR3 → IR are continuous functions whichverify some hypotheses.

This paper addresses a new differential game problem with forward-backward doubly stochastic differential equations. There are two distinguishing features. One is that our game systems are initial coupled, rather than terminal coupled. The other is that the admissible control is required to be adapted to a subset of the information generated by the underlying Brownian motions. We establish a necessary condition and a sufficient condition for an equilibrium point of nonzero-sum games and a saddle point of zero-sum games. To illustrate some possible applications, an example of linear-quadratic nonzero-sum differential games is worked out. Applying stochastic filtering techniques, we obtain an explicit expression of the equilibrium point.

The subject of this paper is the rigorous derivation of reduced models for a thin plate by means of Γ-convergence, in the framework of finite plasticity. Denoting by ε the thickness of the plate, we analyse the case where the scaling factor of the elasto-plastic energy per unit volume is of order ε2α−2, with α ≥ 3. According to the value of α, partially or fully linearized models are deduced, which correspond, in the absence of plastic deformation, to the Von Kármán plate theory and the linearized plate theory.

A phase field approach for structural topology optimization which allows for topologychanges and multiple materials is analyzed. First order optimality conditions arerigorously derived and it is shown via formally matched asymptoticexpansions that these conditions converge to classical first order conditions obtained inthe context of shape calculus. We also discuss how to deal with triple junctions wheree.g. two materials and the void meet. Finally, we present severalnumerical results for mean compliance problems and a cost involving the least square errorto a target displacement.

This paper provides a convergent numerical approximation of the Pareto optimal set for finite-horizon multiobjective optimal control problems in which the objective space is not necessarily convex. Our approach is based on Viability Theory. We first introduce a set-valued return function V and show that the epigraph of V equals the viability kernel of a certain related augmented dynamical system. We then introduce an approximate set-valued return function with finite set-values as the solution of a multiobjective dynamic programming equation. The epigraph of this approximate set-valued return function equals to the finite discrete viability kernel resulting from the convergent numerical approximation of the viability kernel proposed in [P. Cardaliaguet, M. Quincampoix and P. Saint-Pierre. Birkhauser, Boston (1999) 177–247. P. Cardaliaguet, M. Quincampoix and P. Saint-Pierre, Set-Valued Analysis 8 (2000) 111–126]. As a result, the epigraph of the approximate set-valued return function converges to the epigraph of V. The approximate set-valued return function finally provides the proposed numerical approximation of the Pareto optimal set for every initial time and state. Several numerical examples illustrate our approach.

We study the first eigenpair of a Dirichlet spectral problem for singularly perturbedconvection-diffusion operators with oscillating locally periodic coefficients. It followsfrom the results of [A. Piatnitski and V. Rybalko, On the first eigenpair of singularlyperturbed operators with oscillating coefficients. Preprintwww.arxiv.org, arXiv:1206.3754] that thefirst eigenvalue remains bounded only if the integral curves of the so-called effectivedrift have a nonempty ω-limit set. Here we consider the case when theintegral curves can have both hyperbolic fixed points and hyperbolic limit cycles. One ofthe main goals of this work is to determine a fixed point or a limit cycle responsible forthe first eigenpair asymptotics. Here we focus on the case of limit cycles that was leftopen in [A. Piatnitski and V. Rybalko, Preprint.

In this paper, we employ the reduced basis method as a surrogate model for the solutionof linear-quadratic optimal control problems governed by parametrized elliptic partialdifferential equations. We present a posteriori error estimation and dualprocedures that provide rigorous bounds for the error in several quantities of interest:the optimal control, the cost functional, and general linear output functionals of thecontrol, state, and adjoint variables. We show that, based on the assumption of affineparameter dependence, the reduced order optimal control problem and the proposed boundscan be efficiently evaluated in an offline-online computational procedure. Numericalresults are presented to confirm the validity of our approach.

We consider the problem of minimizing \hbox{$\int_{0}^\ell \sqrt{\xi^2 +K^2(s)}\, {\rm d}s $}${{}^{\mathrm{\int }}}_{\mathrm{0}}^{\mathit{\ell }}\sqrt{{\mathit{\xi }}^{\mathrm{2}}\mathrm{+}{\mathit{K}}^{\mathrm{2}}\mathrm{\left(}\mathit{s}\mathrm{\right)}}\hspace{0.17em}\mathrm{d}\mathit{s}$ for a planar curve having fixed initial and final positions and directions. The total length ℓ is free. Here s is the arclength parameter, K(s) is the curvature of the curve and ξ > 0 is a fixed constant. This problem comes from a model of geometry of vision due to Petitot, Citti and Sarti. We study existence of local and global minimizers for this problem. We prove that if for a certain choice of boundary conditions there is no global minimizer, then there is neither a local minimizer nor a geodesic. We finally give properties of the set of boundary conditions for which there exists a solution to the problem.