Exhaustion approximation for the control problem of the heat or Schr\"odinger semigroup on unbounded domains

Abstract

We consider the control problem of the heat equation on bounded and unbounded domains, and more generally the corresponding inhomogeneous equation for the Schr\"odinger semigroup. We show that if the sequence of null-controls associated to an exhaustion of an unbounded domain converges, then the solutions do in the same way, and that the control cost estimate carries over to the limiting problem on the unbounded domain. This allows to infer the controllability on unbounded domains by studying the control problem on a sequence of bounded domains.