Christophe Prieur

This paper studies the problem of output feedback stabilization of a nonlinear diffusion equation, generally referred to as the generalized porous media equation. This equation occurs in a number of physical phenomena involving fluid flow, heat transfer or nonlinear diffusion. The generalized porous media equation differs from classical reaction-diffusion equations due to the presence of a nonlinear version of the Laplacian operator. This nonlinearity induces numerous challenges in terms of stability assessment and control design. In this context, the present paper reports one of the very first contributions regarding the output feedback control of the porous media equation. The reported approach takes advantage of the monotonicity property of the nonlinearity and adopts a perturbation-based approach by leveraging spectral reduction methods.

We study boundary controllability of one-dimensional coupled hyperbolic-parabolic cascades, focusing on the fine structure of reachable sets. The main model is a wave-heat cascade in which a boundary control acts on the wave equation and drives the heat equation through an internal coupling. We provide a sharp minimal time for the hyperbolic part (T > 2L) and a complete spectral characterization of exact controllability in weighted Hilbert spaces, whose definition depends explicitly on the coupling profile through a sequence of modal coefficients. In particular, internal couplings may generate nonstandard highly irregular controllability spaces and yield a generic (full measure) but non-robust controllability property. The analysis relies on Riesz basis decompositions and on an Ingham-M{ü}ntz inequality. We also prove that the exact controllability space is not invariant along Hilbert Uniqueness Method trajectories: even if both endpoints belong to the controllability space, the associated minimal-energy trajectory may leave it at intermediate times. Finally, we compare with the reversed (heat-wave) cascade and discuss how reversing the direction of the coupling transfers the loss of regularity between the parabolic and hyperbolic components.

We study boundary controllability of one-dimensional coupled hyperbolic-parabolic cascades, focusing on the fine structure of reachable sets. The main model is a wave-heat cascade in which a boundary control acts on the wave equation and drives the heat equation through an internal coupling. We provide a sharp minimal time for the hyperbolic part (T > 2L) and a complete spectral characterization of exact controllability in weighted Hilbert spaces, whose definition depends explicitly on the coupling profile through a sequence of modal coefficients. In particular, internal couplings may generate nonstandard highly irregular controllability spaces and yield a generic (full measure) but non-robust controllability property. The analysis relies on Riesz basis decompositions and on an Ingham-Müntz inequality. We also prove that the exact controllability space is not invariant along Hilbert Uniqueness Method trajectories: even if both endpoints belong to the controllability space, the associated minimal-energy trajectory may leave it at intermediate times. Finally, we compare with the reversed (heat-wave) cascade and discuss how reversing the direction of the coupling transfers the loss of regularity between the parabolic and hyperbolic components.

We consider the output-feedback stabilization of a one-dimensional cascade coupling a reaction-diffusion equation and a wave equation through an internal term, with Neumann boundary control acting at the wave endpoint. Two measurements are available: the wave velocity at the controlled boundary and a temperature-type observation of the reaction-diffusion component, either distributed or pointwise. Under explicit, necessary and sufficient conditions on the coupling and observation profiles, we show that the generator of the open-loop system is a Riesz-spectral operator. Exploiting this structure, we design a finite-dimensional dynamic output-feedback law, based on a finite number of parabolic modes, which achieves arbitrary exponential decay in both the natural energy space and a stronger parabolic norm. The construction relies on a spectral reduction and a Lyapunov argument in Riesz bases. We also extend the design to pointwise temperature or heat-flux measurements.

We consider the output-feedback stabilization of a one-dimensional cascade coupling a reaction-diffusion equation and a wave equation through an internal term, with Neumann boundary control acting at the wave endpoint. Two measurements are available: the wave velocity at the controlled boundary and a temperature-type observation of the reaction-diffusion component, either distributed or pointwise. Under explicit, necessary and sufficient conditions on the coupling and observation profiles, we show that the generator of the open-loop system is a Riesz-spectral operator. Exploiting this structure, we design a finite-dimensional dynamic output-feedback law, based on a finite number of parabolic modes, which achieves arbitrary exponential decay in both the natural energy space and a stronger parabolic norm. The construction relies on a spectral reduction and a Lyapunov argument in Riesz bases. We also extend the design to pointwise temperature or heat-flux measurements.