Boundary controllability of Maxwell’s equations with nonzero conductivity inside a cube, II: Lack of exact controllability and controllability for very smooth solutions ✩

This is a second paper in a two part series. In the prequel, [S.S. Krigman, C.E.Wayne, Boundary controllability of Maxwell’s equations with nonzero conductivity inside a cube, I: Spectral controllability, J. Math. Anal. Appl. (2006), doi:10.1016/j.jmaa2006.06.101], we showed that a system of Maxwell’s equations for a homogeneous medium in a cube with nonnegative conductivity possesses the property that any finite combination of eigenfunctions is controllable (spectral controllability) by means of boundary surface currents applied over only one face of the cube. In the present paper it is established, by modifying the calculations in [H.O. Fattorini, Estimates for sequences biorthogonal to certain complex exponentials and boundary control of the wave equation, in: New Trends in Systems Analysis, Proceedings of the International Symposium, Versailles, 1976, in: Lecture Notes in Control and Inform. Sci., vol. 2, Springer, Berlin, 1977, pp. 111–124], that spectral controllability is the strongest result possible for this geometry, since the exact controllability fails regardless of the size of the conductivity term. However, we do establish controllability of solutionsthat are smooth enough that the Fourier coefficients of their initial data decay at an appropriate exponential rate. This does not contradict the lack of exact controllability since in any Sobolev space there are initial conditions which violate these restrictions. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved