Optimality conditions and Lipschitz stability for non-smooth semilinear elliptic optimal control problems with sparse controls

Abstract: This paper is concerned with first- and second-order optimality conditions as well as the stability for non-smooth semilinear optimal control problems involving the $L^1$-norm of the control in the cost functional. In addition to the appearance of the $L^1$-norm leading to the non-differentiability of the objective and promoting the sparsity of the optimal controls, the non-smoothness of the nonlinear coefficient in the state equation causes the same property of the control-to-state operator. Exploiting a regularization scheme, we derive $C$-stationarity conditions for any local optimal control. Under a structural assumption on the associated state, we define the curvature functional for the part not including the $L^1$-norm of controls of the objective for which the second-order necessary and sufficient optimality conditions are shown. Furthermore, under a more restrictive structural assumption imposed on the mentioned state, an explicit formulation of the curvature is established and thus the explicit second-order optimality conditions are stated. Finally, the Lipschitz stability of local solutions with respect to the sparsity parameter is shown.