Differential Geometric Methods in the Control of Partial Differential Equations: 1999 Ams-Ims-Siam Joint Summer Research Conference on Differential ... University of co

Proceedings of the June 1999 conference that explored the infusion of differential-geometric methods into the analysis of control theory of partial differential equations, particularly in the challenging case of variable coefficients where the physical characteristics of the medium vary from point to point. The 16 papers each have a geometric flavor and component; some dig deeply into the interaction between geometric tools and the evolution of control problems. Topics include stabilization for structural acoustic problems and systems of anisotropic elasticity; intrinsic geometric models for shell equations; free boundary problems arising in optimization of composite membranes; evolution of a graph by its Levi form; prescribed scalar curvature on compact manifolds with boundary, sensitivity analysis; exact controllability of hyperbolic equations and related inverse problems; and local and global uniqueness of PDE's (or, equivalently, approximate controllability of the adjoint system). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)