Turnpike property of linear quadratic control problems with unbounded control operators

Abstract: We establish the turnpike property for linear quadratic control problems for which the control operator is admissible and may be unbounded, under quite general and natural assumptions. The turnpike property has been well studied for bounded control operators, based on the theory of differential and algebraic Riccati equations. For unbounded control operators, there are only few results, limited to some special cases of hyperbolic systems in dimension one or to analytic semigroups. Our analysis is inspired by the pioneering work of Porretta and Zuazua \cite{PZ13}. We start by approximating the admissible control operator with a sequence of bounded ones. We then prove the convergence of the approximate problems to the initial one in a suitable sense. Establishing this convergence is the core of the paper. It requires to revisit in some sense the linear quadratic optimal control theory with admissible control operators, in which the roles of energy and adjoint states, and the connection between infinite-horizon and finite-horizon optimal control problems with an appropriate final cost are investigated.