Adaptive Finite Element Approximation for Distributed Elliptic Optimal Control Problems

In this paper, sharp a posteriori error estimators are derived for a class of distributed elliptic optimal control problems. These error estimators are shown to be useful in adaptive finite element approximation for the optimal control problems and are implemented in the adaptive approach. Our numerical results indicate that the sharp error estimators work satisfactorily in guiding the mesh adjustments and can save substantial computational work.