Finite element error analysis of affine optimal control problems

Abstract: This paper is concerned with error estimates for the numerical approximation for affine optimal control problems subject to semilinear elliptic PDEs. To investigate the error estimates, we focus on local minimizers that satisfy certain local growth conditions. The local growth conditions we consider in this paper appeared recently in the context of solution stability and contain the joint growth of the first and second variation of the objective functional. These growth conditions are especially meaningful for affine control constrained optimal control problems because the first variation can satisfy a local growth, which is not the case for unconstrained problems. The main results of this paper are the achievement of error estimates for the numerical approximations generated by a finite element scheme with piecewise constant controls or a variational discretization scheme. Even though the growth conditions considered are weaker than those appearing in the recent literature on finite element error estimates for affine problems, this paper substantially improves the existing error estimates for both the optimal controls and the states when a H\"older-type growth is assumed.