| Abstract: | Summary. In this paper we develop an a posteriori error estimator for parameter identification problems. The state equation is given by a partial differential equation involving a finite number of unknown parameters. The presented error estimator aims to control the error in the parameters due to discretization by finite elements. For this, we consider the general setting of a partial differential equation written in weak form with abstract parameter dependence. Exploiting the special structure of the parameter identification problem, allows us to derive an error estimator which is cheap in comparison to the overall optimization algorithm. Several examples illustrating the behavior of an adaptive mesh refinement algorithm based on our error estimator are discussed in the numerical section. For the problems considered here, both, the efficiency of the estimator and the quality of the generated meshes are satisfactory. Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000): 65K10, 65N30, 49K20This work has been supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through SFB 359 Reactive Flow, Diffusion and Transport and Graduiertenkolleg  Modellierung und wissenschaftliches Rechnen in Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften |
