A Superconvergent HDG Method for Distributed Control of Convection Diffusion PDEs

Abstract: We consider a distributed optimal control problem governed by an elliptic convection diffusion PDE, and propose a hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method to approximate the solution. We use polynomials of degree $k+1$ and $k \ge 0$ to approximate the state, dual state, and their fluxes, respectively. Moreover, we use polynomials of degree $k$ to approximate the numerical traces of the state and dual state on the faces, which are the only globally coupled unknowns. We prove optimal a priori error estimates for all variables when $ k > 0 $. Furthermore, from the point of view of the number of degrees of freedom of the globally coupled unknowns, this method achieves superconvergence for the state, dual state, and control when $k\geq 1$. We illustrate our convergence results with numerical experiments.