Finite Element Error Estimation for Parabolic Optimal Control Problems with Pointwise Observations

Abstract

In this paper, we consider parabolic distributed control problems with cost functional of pointwise observation type either in space or in time. First, we show the well-posedness of the optimization problems and derive the first order optimality systems, where the adjoint state can be expressed as the linear combination of solutions to two backward parabolic equations that involve the Dirac delta distribution as source either in space or in time. Second, we use a space-time finite element method to discretize the control problems, where the state variable is approximated by piecewise constant functions in time and continuous piecewise linear polynomials in space, and the control variable is discretized by following the variational discretization concept. We obtain a priori error estimates for the control and state variables with order $\mathcal{O}(k^{\frac{1}{2}}+h)$ up to a logarithmic factor under the $L^2$-norm. Finally, we perform several numerical experiments to support our theoretical results.