In the setting ofa real Hilbert space ${\cal H}$, we investigate the asymptotic behavior, as time t goes to infinity, of trajectories of second-order evolutionequations

          ü(t) + γ$\dot{u}$(t) + ∇ϕ(u(t)) + A(u(t)) = 0,

where ∇ϕ is the gradient operator of a convexdifferentiable potential function ϕ : ${\cal H}\to \R$, A : ${\cal H}\to {\cal H}$ is a maximal monotone operator which is assumed to beλ-cocoercive, and γ > 0 is a damping parameter.Potential and non-potential effects are associated respectively to∇ϕ and A. Under condition λγ2 > 1, it is proved that each trajectory asymptotically weaklyconverges to a zero of ∇ϕ + A. This condition, whichonly involves the non-potential operator and the dampingparameter, is sharp and consistent with time rescaling. Passingfrom weak to strong convergence of the trajectories is obtained byintroducing an asymptotically vanishing Tikhonov-like regularizingterm. As special cases, we recover the asymptotic analysis of theheavy ball with friction dynamic attached to a convex potential, thesecond-order gradient-projection dynamic, and the second-orderdynamic governed by the Yosida approximation of a general maximalmonotone operator. The breadth and flexibility of the proposed framework is illustrated through applications in the areas of constrained optimization,dynamical approach to Nash equilibria for noncooperative games, and asymptotic stabilization in the case of a continuum of equilibria.

Let $u\in\phi+ W_0^{1,1}(\Omega)$ be a minimum for

$\[I(v)=\int_{\Omega}g(x,v(x))+f(\nabla v(x))\,{\rm d}x\]$

where f is convex, $v\mapsto g(x,v)$ is convex for a.e. x. We prove that u shares the same modulus of continuity of ϕ whenever Ω is sufficiently regular, the right derivative of g satisfies a suitable monotonicity assumption and the following inequality holds

$\forall \gamma\in\partial\Omega\qquad |u(x)-\phi(\gamma)|\le\omega(|x-\gamma|) \quad\text{a.e. }x\in\Omega.$

This result generalizes the classical Haar-Rado theorem forLipschitz functions.

We consider the following classical autonomous variational problem

\[ \textrm{minimize\,} \left\{F(v)=\int_a^b f(v(x),v'(x))\ \dx\,:\,v\in AC([a,b]), \;v(a)=\alpha,\; v(b)=\beta\right\},\]

where the Lagrangian f is possibly neither continuous, nor convex, nor coercive.We prove a monotonicity property of the minimizers stating that they satisfy the maximum principle or the minimum one. By virtue of such a property, applying recent results concerning constrained variational problems, we derive a relaxation theorem, the DuBois-Reymond necessary condition and some existenceor non-existence criteria.


In this paper, the stability of a Timoshenko beam with time delaysin the boundary input is studied. The system is fixed at the leftend, and at the other end there are feedback controllers, in which time delays exist. We prove that this closed loop system iswell-posed. By the complete spectral analysis, we show that there isa sequence of eigenvectors and generalized eigenvectors of thesystem operator that forms a Riesz basis for the state Hilbert space. Hence the system satisfies the spectrum determined growth condition. Then we conclude the exponential stability of the system under certain conditions. Finally, we give some simulations to support our results.


Convex duality is a powerful framework for solving non-smooth optimal control problems. However, for problems set in non-reflexive Banach spaces such as L1(Ω) or BV(Ω), the dual problem is formulated in a space which has difficult measure theoretic structure. The predual problem, on the other hand, can be formulated in a Hilbert space and entails the minimization of a smooth functional with box constraints, for which efficient numerical methods exist. In this work, elliptic control problems with measures and functions of bounded variation as controls are considered. Existence and uniqueness of the corresponding predual problems are discussed, as is the solution of the optimality systems by a semismooth Newton method. Numerical examples illustrate the structural differences in the optimal controls in these Banach spaces, compared to those obtained in corresponding Hilbert space settings.

We prove the existence of a principal eigenvalue associated to the∞-Laplacian plus lower order terms and the Neumann boundarycondition in a bounded smooth domain. As an application we getuniqueness and existence results for the Neumann problem and adecay estimate for viscosity solutions of the Neumann evolutionproblem.

Optimization problems with convex but non-smooth cost functional subject to an elliptic partial differential equation are considered.The non-smoothness arises from a L1-norm in the objective functional. The problem is regularized to permit the use of the semi-smooth Newtonmethod. Error estimates with respect to the regularization parameter are provided. Moreover, finite element approximations are studied. A-priori as well as a-posteriori error estimates are developed and confirmed by numerical experiments.

This paper deals with feedback stabilization of second order equations ofthe form

ytt + A0y + u (t) B0y (t) = 0, t ∈ [0, +∞[,

where A0 is a densely defined positive selfadjoint linear operator on areal Hilbert space H, with compact inverse and B0 is a linear map in diagonal form. It isproved here that the classical sufficient ad-condition of Jurdjevic-Quinn andBall-Slemrod with the feedback control u = ⟨yt, B0y⟩Himplies thestrong stabilization. This result is derived from a general compactnesstheorem for semigroup with compact resolvent and solves several open problems.

The motivation of this article is double. First of all we provide a geometrical framework to the application of the smooth continuation method in optimal control, where the concept of conjugate points is related to the convergence of the method. In particular, it can be applied to the analysis of the global optimality properties of the geodesic flows of a family of Riemannian metrics. Secondly, this study is used to complete the analysis of two-level dissipative quantum systems, where the system is depending upon three physical parameters, which can be used as homotopy parameters, and the time-minimizing trajectory for a prescribed couple of extremities can be analyzed by making a deformation of the Grushin metric on a two-sphere of revolution.

Recall that a smooth Riemannian metric on a simply connected domain canbe realized as the pull-back metric of an orientation preserving deformation ifand only if the associated Riemann curvature tensor vanishes identically.When this condition fails, one seeks a deformation yielding the closest metric realization. We set up a variational formulation of this problem byintroducing the non-Euclidean version of the nonlinear elasticity functional, and establish its Γ-convergence under the properscaling. As a corollary, we obtain new necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of a W2,2 isometric immersion of a given 2d metricinto $\mathbb R^3$.

We consider the Dirichlet Laplacian in a thin curvedthree-dimensional rod. The rod is finite. Its cross-section isconstant and small, and rotates along the reference curve in anarbitrary way. We find a two-parametric set of the eigenvalues ofsuch operator and construct their complete asymptotic expansions. Weshow that this two-parametric set contains any prescribed number ofthe first eigenvalues of the considered operator. We obtain thecomplete asymptotic expansions for the eigenfunctions associatedwith these first eigenvalues.

The maximum principle for optimal control problems of fully coupledforward-backward doubly stochastic differential equations (FBDSDEs in short)in the global form is obtained, under the assumptions that the diffusioncoefficients do not contain the control variable, but the control domainneed not to be convex. We apply our stochastic maximum principle (SMP inshort) to investigate the optimal control problems of a class of stochasticpartial differential equations (SPDEs in short). And as an example of theSMP, we solve a kind of forward-backward doubly stochastic linear quadraticoptimal control problems as well. In the last section, we use the solutionof FBDSDEs to get the explicit form of the optimal control for linearquadratic stochastic optimal control problem and open-loop Nash equilibriumpoint for nonzero sum stochastic differential games problem.

In this paper we analyse an approximate controllability result for a nonlinear population dynamics model. In this model the birth term is nonlocal and describes the recruitment process in newborn individuals population, and the control acts on a small open set of the domain and corresponds to an elimination or a supply of newborn individuals. In our proof we use a unique continuation property for the solution of the heat equation and the Kakutani-Fan-Glicksberg fixed point theorem.