A minimisation problem in L∞ with PDE and unilateral constraints

Abstract

We study the minimisation of a cost functional which measures the misfit on the boundary of a domain between a component of the solution to a certain parametric elliptic PDE system and a prediction of the values of this solution. We pose this problem as a PDE-constrained minimisation problem for a supremal cost functional in L∞, where except for the PDE constraint there is also a unilateral constraint on the parameter. We utilise approximation by PDE-constrained minimisation problems in Lp as p →∞ and the generalised Kuhn-Tucker theory to derive the relevant variational inequalities in Lp and L∞. These results are motivated by the mathematical modelling of the novel bio-medical imaging method of Fluorescent Optical Tomography.