Unstructured Space-Time Finite Element Methods for Optimal Sparse Control of Parabolic Equations

03/31/2020

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by   Ulrich Langer, et al.

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We consider a space-time finite element method on fully unstructured simplicial meshes for optimal sparse control of semilinear parabolic equations. The objective is a combination of a standard quadratic tracking-type functional including a Tikhonov regularization term and of the L^1-norm of the control that accounts for its spatio-temporal sparsity. We use a space-time Petrov-Galerkin finite element discretization for the first-order necessary optimality system of the associated discrete optimal sparse control problem. The discretization is based on a variational formulation that employs piecewise linear finite elements simultaneously in space and time. Finally, the discrete nonlinear optimality system that consists of coupled forward-backward state and adjoint state equations is solved by a semismooth Newton method.