A sharp error analysis for the discontinuous Galerkin method of optimal control problems

Abstract

In this paper, we are concerned with a nonlinear optimal control problem of ordinary differential equations. We consider a discretization of the problem with the discontinuous Galerkin method with arbitrary order $r\in \mathbb{N}\cup \{0\}$. Under suitable regularity assumptions on the cost functional and solutions of the state equations, we provide sharp estimates for the error of the approximate solutions. Numerical experiments are presented supporting the theoretical results.