AbstractsMathematics

It is well-known that the solution of a so-called singularly perturbed differential equation exhibits layers. These are small regions in the domain where the solution changes drastically. These layers deteriorate the convergence of standard numerical algorithms, such as the finite element method on a uniform mesh. In the past many approaches were developed to overcome this difficulty. In this context it was very helpful to understand the structure of the solution - especially to know where the layers can occur. Therefore, we have a lot of analysis in the literature concerning the properties of solutions of such problems. Nevertheless, this field is far from being understood conclusively. More recently, there is an increasing interest in the numerics of optimal control problems subject to a singularly perturbed convection-diffusion equation and box constraints for the control. However, it is not much known about the solutions of such optimal control problems. The proposed solution methods are based on the experience one has from scalar singularly perturbed differential equations, but so far, the analysis presented does not use the structure of the solution and in fact, the provided bounds are rather meaningless for solutions which exhibit boundary layers, since these bounds scale like epsilon^(-1.5) as epsilon converges to 0. In this thesis we strive to prove bounds for the solution and its derivatives of the optimal control problem. These bounds show that there is an additional layer that is weaker than the layers one expects knowing the results for scalar differential equation problems, but that weak layer deteriorates the convergence of the proposed methods. In Chapter 1 and 2 we discuss the optimal control problem for the one-dimensional case. We consider the case without control constraints and the case with control constraints separately. For the case without control constraints we develop a method to prove bounds for arbitrary derivatives of the solution, given the data is smooth enough. For the latter case we prove bounds for the derivatives up to the second order. Subsequently, we discuss several discretization methods. In this context we use special Shishkin meshes. These meshes are piecewise equidistant, but have a very fine subdivision in the region of the layers. Additionally, we consider different ways of discretizing the control constraints. The first one enforces the compliance of the constraints everywhere and the other one enforces it only in the mesh nodes. For each proposed algorithm we prove convergence estimates that are independent of the parameter epsilon. Hence, they are meaningful even for small values of epsilon. As a next step we turn to the two-dimensional case. To be able to adapt the proofs of Chapter 2 to this case we require bounds for the solution of the scalar differential equation problem for a right hand side f only in W^(1,infty). Although, a lot of results for this problem can be found in the literature but we can not apply any of them, because they require a smooth right…