The Vlasov–Poisson system describes the time evolution of a plasma in the so-called collisionless regime. The investigation of a high-temperature plasma that is influenced by an exterior magnetic field is one of the most significant aspects of thermonuclear fusion research. In this paper, we formulate and analyze a kinetic optimal control problem for the Vlasov–Poisson system where the control is represented by an external magnetic field. The main goal of such optimal control problems is to confine the plasma to a certain region in phase space. We first investigate the optimal control problem in terms of mathematical analysis, i.e., we show the existence of at least one global minimizer and rigorously derive a first-order necessary optimality condition for local minimizers by the adjoint approach. Then we build a Monte Carlo framework to solve the state equations as well as the adjoint equations by means of a particle-in-cell method, and we apply a nonlinear conjugate gradient method to solve the optimization problem. Eventually, we present numerical experiments that successfully validate our optimization framework.

This paper is devoted to the formulation and numerical solution by Monte Carlo (MC) methods of an optimal control problem governed by the linear space-homogeneous Keilson-Storer (KS) master equation. The KS master equation is a representative model of the class of linear Boltzmann equations with many applications ranging from spectroscopy to transport theory. The purpose of the optimal control in the collision kernel of this model is to drive an ensemble of particles to acquire a desired mean velocity and to achieve a desired final velocity configuration. For this purpose, a KS optimality system characterizing the solution of the proposed optimal control problem is derived and used to construct a gradient-based optimization strategy in the framework of MC methods. This task requires to accommodate the resulting adjoint KS model in a form that is consistent with the kinetic formulation. Results of numerical experiments successfully validate the proposed control framework.

This paper is devoted to the numerical analysis of non-smooth ensemble optimal control problems governed by the Liouville (continuity) equation that have been originally proposed by R.W. Brockett with the purpose of determining an efficient and robust control strategy for dynamical systems. A numerical methodology for solving these problems is presented that is based on a non-smooth Lagrange optimization framework where the optimal controls are characterized as solutions to the related optimality systems. For this purpose, approximation and solution schemes are developed and analysed. Specifically, for the approximation of the Liouville model and its optimization adjoint, a combination of a Kurganov–Tadmor method, a Runge–Kutta scheme, and a Strang splitting method are discussed. The resulting optimality system is solved by a projected semi-smooth Krylov–Newton method. Results of numerical experiments are presented that successfully validate the proposed framework.

To study the nonlinear properties of complex natural phenomena, the evolution of the quantity of interest can be often represented by systems of coupled nonlinear stochastic differential equations (SDEs). These SDEs typically contain several parameters which have to be chosen carefully to match the experimental data and to validate the effectiveness of the model. In the present paper the calibration of these parameters is described by nonlinear SDE-constrained optimization problems. In the optimize-before-discretize setting a rigorous analysis is carried out to ensure the existence of optimal solutions and to derive necessary first-order optimality conditions. For the numerical solution a Monte–Carlo method is applied using parallelization strategies to compensate for the high computational time. In the numerical examples an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck and a stochastic Prandtl–Tomlinson bath model are considered.

Physical models often contain unknown functions and relations. The goal of our work is to answer the question of how one should excite or control a system under consideration in an appropriate way to be able to reconstruct an unknown nonlinear relation. To answer this question, we propose a greedy reconstruction algorithm within an offline-online strategy. We apply this strategy to a two-dimensional semilinear elliptic model. Our identification is based on the application of several space-dependent excitations (also called controls). These specific controls are designed by the algorithm in order to obtain a deeper insight into the underlying physical problem and a more precise reconstruction of the unknown relation. We perform numerical simulations that demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach which is not limited to the current type of equation. Since our algorithm provides not only a way to determine unknown operators by existing data but also protocols for new experiments, it is a holistic concept to tackle the problem of improving physical models.