Description

This volume contains selected papers that were presented at the AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Research Conference on “Differential Geometric Methods in the Control of Partial Differential Equations”, which was held at the University of Colorado in Boulder in June 1999. The aim of the conference was to explore the infusion of differential-geometric methods into the analysis of control theory of partial differential equations, particularly in the challenging case of variable coefficients, where the physical characteristics of the medium vary from point to point. While a mutually profitable link has been long established, for at least 30 years, between differential geometry and control of ordinary differential equations, a comparable relationship between differential geometry and control of partial differential equations (PDEs) is a new and promising topic. Very recent research, just prior to the Colorado conference, supported the expectation that differential geometric methods, when brought to bear on classes of PDE modelling and control problems with variable coefficients, will yield significant mathematical advances. The papers included in this volume—written by specialists in PDEs and control of PDEs as well as by geometers—collectively support the claim that the aims of the conference are being fulfilled. In particular, they endorse the belief that both subjects—differential geometry and control of PDEs—have much to gain by closer interaction with one another. Consequently, further research activities in this area are bound to grow.