A note on functional a posteriori estimates for elliptic optimal control problems

In this work, new results on functional type a posteriori estimates for elliptic optimal control problems with control constraints are presented. More precisely, we derive new, sharp, guaranteed, and fully computable lower bounds for the cost functional in addition to the already existing upper bounds. Using both, the lower and the upper bounds, we arrive at two‐sided estimates for the cost functional. We prove that these bounds finally lead to sharp, guaranteed and fully computable upper estimates for the discretization error in the state and the control of the optimal control problem. First numerical tests are presented confirming the efficiency of the a posteriori estimates derived. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 33: 403–424, 2017