A time-optimal boundary controllability problem for the heat equation in a ball

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study a boundary time-optimal control problem for the heat equation in a two-dimensional ball. The main ingredient is the extension of a result concerning Müntz polynomials due to Borwein and Erdélyi that allows us to prove an observability inequality for the dynamical system's truncation to a finite number of modes. This result, combined with a well-known Lebeau–Robbiano argument used to show the null-controllability of parabolic type equations, enables us to deduce the existence, uniqueness and bang-bang properties for the boundary time-optimal control.