Insensitizing control problem for the Hirota–Satsuma system of KdV–KdV type

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the existence of insensitizing controls for a nonlinear coupled system of two Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equations, typically known as the Hirota–Satsuma system. The idea is to look for controls such that some functional of the states (the so-called sentinel) is insensitive to the small perturbations of initial data. Since the system is coupled, we consider a sentinel in which we observe both components of the system in a localized observation set. By some classical argument, the insensitizing problem is then reduced to a null-control problem for an extended system where the number of equations is doubled. We study the null-controllability for the linearized model associated to that extended system by means of a suitable Carleman estimate which is proved in this paper. Finally, the local null-controllability of the extended (nonlinear) system is obtained by applying the inverse mapping theorem, and this implies the required insensitizing property for the concerned model.