Constructive proof of the exact controllability for semi-linear wave equations

Abstract

The exact distributed controllability of the semilinear wave equation $\partial_{tt}y-\Delta y + g(y)=f \,1_{\omega}$ posed over multi-dimensional and bounded domains, assuming that $g\in C^1(\mathbb{R})$ satisfies the growth condition $\limsup_{r\to \infty} g(r)/(\vert r\vert \ln^{1/2}\vert r\vert)=0$ has been obtained by Fu, Yong and Zhang in 2007. The proof based on a non constructive Leray-Schauder fixed point theorem makes use of precise estimates of the observability constant for a linearized wave equation. Assuming that $g^\prime$ does not grow faster than $\beta \ln^{1/2}\vert r\vert$ at infinity for $\beta>0$ small enough and that $g^\prime$ is uniformly H\"older continuous on $\mathbb{R}$ with exponent $s\in (0,1]$, we design a constructive proof yielding an explicit sequence converging to a controlled solution for the semilinear equation, at least with order $1+s$ after a finite number of iterations.