Approximate Controllability for the Semilinear Heat Equation Involving Gradient Terms

This paper deals with the approximate controllability of the semilinear heat equation, when the nonlinear term depends on both the state y and its spatial gradient y and the control acts on any nonempty open subset of the domain. Our proof relies on the fact that the nonlinearity is globally Lipschitz with respect to (y, y). The approximate controllability is viewed as the limit of a sequence of optimal control problems. Another key ingredient is a unique continuation property proved by Fabre (Ref. 1) in the context of linear heat equations. Finally, we prove that approximate controllability can be obtained simultaneously with exact controllability over finite-dimensional subspaces.