Codice 28/2009 Titolo Spectral Element Discretization of Optimal Control Problems Data 2009-09-11 Autore/i Gaudio, Loredana; Quarteroni, Alfio Link Download full text Abstract In this work we consider the numerical solution of a distributed optimal control problem associated with an elliptic partial differential equation. We approximate the optimality system by the spectral element method and derive a posteriori error estimates with respect to the cost functional. Then we use an hN adaptive refinement technique to reduce this error: the error indicator is used to mark what elements must be refined. The choice between an h or N refinement is based on the use of a predicted error reduction algorithm. Numerical results show the way this algorithm works.