On the lack of null-controllability of the heat equation on the half-line

We consider the linear heat equation on the half-line with a Dirichlet boundary control. We analyze the null-controllability problem. More precisely, we study the class of initial data that may be driven to zero in finite time by means of an appropriate choice of the boundary control. We rewrite the system on the similarity variables that are a common tool when analyzing asymptotic problems. Next, the control problem is reduced to a moment problem which turns out to be critical since it concerns the family of real exponentials in which the usual summability condition on the inverses of the eigenvalues does not hold. Roughly speaking, we prove that controllable data have Fourier coefficients that grow exponentially for large frequencies. This result is in contrast with the existing ones for bounded domains that guarantee that every initial datum belonging to a Sobolev space of negative order may be driven to zero in an arbitrarily small time.