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    A new type of identification problems: Optimizing the fractional order in a nonlocal evolution equation
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2016) Sprekels, Jürgen; Valdinoci, Enrico
    In this paper, we consider a rather general linear evolution equation of fractional type, namely a diffusion type problem in which the diffusion operator is the sth power of a positive definite operator having a discrete spectrum in R+. We prove existence, uniqueness and differentiability properties with respect to the fractional parameter s. These results are then employed to derive existence as well as first-order necessary and second-order sufficient optimality conditions for a minimization problem, which is inspired by considerations in mathematical biology. In this problem, the fractional parameter s serves as the control parameter that needs to be chosen in such a way as to minimize a given cost functional. This problem constitutes a new class of identification problems: while usually in identification problems the type of the differential operator is prescribed and one or several of its coefficient functions need to be identified, in the present case one has to determine the type of the differential operator itself. This problem exhibits the inherent analytical difficulty that with changing fractional parameter s also the domain of definition, and thus the underlying function space, of the fractional operator changes.
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    A distributed control problem for a fractional tumor growth model
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2019) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we study the distributed optimal control of a system of three evolutionary equations involving fractional powers of three selfadjoint, monotone, unbounded linear operators having compact resolvents. The system is a generalization of a Cahn--Hilliard type phase field system modeling tumor growth that goes back to Hawkins-Daarud et al. (Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Eng. 28 (2012), 3--24.) The aim of the control process, which could be realized by either administering a drug or monitoring the nutrition, is to keep the tumor cell fraction under control while avoiding possible harm for the patient. In contrast to previous studies, in which the occurring unbounded operators governing the diffusional regimes were all given by the Laplacian with zero Neumann boundary conditions, the operators may in our case be different; more generally, we consider systems with fractional powers of the type that were studied in the recent work Adv. Math. Sci. Appl. 28 (2019), 343--375 by the present authors. In our analysis, we show the Fréchet differentiability of the associated control-to-state operator, establish the existence of solutions to the associated adjoint system, and derive the first-order necessary conditions of optimality for a cost functional of tracking type.