We are concerned with the short-time observability constant of the heat equation from a
subdomain of a
bounded domain
. The
constant is of the form
,
where
depends only
on the geometry of
and
.
Luc Miller (J. Differential Equations 204:1 (2004), 202–226) conjectured that
is (universally) proportional to the square of the maximal distance from
to a point of
. We show in particular
geometries that
may blow up like
when
is a ball
of radius
,
hence disproving the conjecture. We then prove in the general case the associated
upper bound on this blowup. We also show that the conjecture is true for positive
solutions of the heat equation.
The proofs rely on the study of the maximal vanishing rate of (sums of)
eigenfunctions. They also yield lower and upper bounds for other geometric constants
appearing as tunneling constants or approximate control costs.
As an intermediate step in the proofs, we provide a uniform Carleman estimate
for Lipschitz metrics. The latter also implies uniform spectral inequalities and
observability estimates for the heat equation in a bounded class of Lipschitz metrics,
which are of independent interest.
Keywords
observability, eigenfunctions, spectral inequality, heat
equation, tunneling estimates, control cost