Analysis of Optimal Control Problems with an $L^0$ Term in the Cost Functional

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate optimal control problems subject to a semilinear elliptic partial differential equations. The cost functional contains a term that measures the size of the support of the control, which is the so-called $L^0$-norm. We provide necessary and sufficient optimality conditions of second-order. The sufficient second-order condition is obtained by analyzing a partially convexified problem. Interestingly, the structure of the problem yields second-order conditions with different bilinear forms for the necessary and for the sufficient condition.