Null-controllability of underactuated linear parabolic-transport systems with constant coefficients

TL;DR

This paper investigates the null-controllability of mixed linear parabolic-transport systems on the one-dimensional torus, establishing conditions under which such systems can be controlled in large time but not in small time, depending on regularity and spectral conditions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of controllability for coupled parabolic-transport systems with constant coefficients, including necessary spectral conditions and regularity requirements, using novel algebraic and WKB methods.

Findings

Large time null-controllability holds under spectral Kalman rank condition.

Small time controllability is impossible for sufficiently regular initial data.

Controllability fails for non-regular initial data.

Abstract

The goal of the present article is to study controllability properties of mixed systems of linear parabolic-transport equations, with possibly non-diagonalizable diffusion matrix, on the one-dimensional torus. The equations are coupled by zero or first order coupling terms, with constant coupling matrices, without any structure assumptions on them. The distributed control acts through a constant matrix operator on the system, so that there might be notably less controls than equations, encompassing the case of indirect and simultaneous controllability. More precisely, we prove that in small time, such kind of systems are never controllable in appropriate Sobolev spaces, whereas in large time, null-controllability holds, for sufficiently regular initial data, if and and only if a spectral Kalman rank condition is verified. We also prove that initial data that are not regular enough are not controllable. Positive results are obtained by using the so-called fictitious control method together with an algebraic solvability argument, whereas the negative results are obtained by using an appropriate WKB construction of approximate solutions for the adjoint system associated to the control problem. As an application to our general results, we also investigate into details the case of $2\times2$ systems (i.e., one pure transport equation and one parabolic equation).