The reflection principle in the control problem of the heat equation

Abstract

We consider the control problem for the generalized heat equation for a Schroedinger operator on a domain with a reflection symmetry with respect to a hyperplane. We show that if this system is null-controllable, then so is the system on its respective parts and the corresponding control cost does not exceed the one on the whole domain. As an application, we obtain null-controllability results for the heat equation on half-spaces, orthants, and sectors of angle $\pi/2$. As a byproduct, we also obtain explicit control cost bounds for the heat equation on certain triangles and corresponding prisms in terms of geometric parameters of the control set.