Cost of null controllability for parabolic equations with vanishing diffusivity and a transport term

¹ Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
² Chair of Computational Mathematics, Fundación Deusto, Avenida de las Universidades 24, 48007 Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.

^* Corresponding author: jonasier.barcena@ehu.eus

Received: 5 April 2021
Accepted: 28 November 2021

Abstract

In this paper we consider the heat equation with Neumann, Robin and mixed boundary conditions (with coefficients on the boundary which depend on the space variable). The main results concern the behaviour of the cost of the null controllability with respect to the diffusivity when the control acts in the interior. First, we prove that if we almost have Dirichlet boundary conditions in the part of the boundary in which the flux of the transport enters, the cost of the controllability decays for a time T sufficiently large. Next, we show some examples of Neumann and mixed boundary conditions in which for any time T > 0 the cost explodes exponentially as the diffusivity vanishes. Finally, we study the cost of the problem with Neumann boundary conditions when the control is localized in the whole domain.