Hysteresis operators appear in many applications such as elasto-plasticity and micromagnetics, and can be used for a wider class of systems, where rate-independent memory plays a role. A natural approximation for systems of evolution equations with hysteresis operators are fast-slow dynamical systems, which -in their used approximation formdo not involve any memory effects. Hence, viewing differential equations with hysteresis operators in the non-linearity as a limit of approximating fast-slow dynamics involves subtle limit procedures. In this paper, we give a proof of Netushil's "observation" that broad classes of planar fast-slow systems with a two-dimensional critical manifold are expected to yield generalized play operators in the singular limit. We provide two proofs of this "observation" based upon the fast-slow systems paradigm of decomposition into subsystems. One proof strategy employs suitable convergence in function spaces, while the second approach considers a geometric strategy via local linearization and patching adapted originally from problems in stochastic analysis. We also provide an illustration of our results in the context of oscillations in forced planar non-autonomous fast-slow systems. The study of this example also strongly suggests that new canard-type mechanisms can occur for two-dimensional critical manifolds in planar systems.

We consider a class of semilinear parabolic evolution equations subject to a hysteresis operator and a Bochner-Lebesgue integrable source term. The underlying spatial domain is allowed to have a very general boundary. In the first part of the paper, we apply semigroup theory to prove well-posedness and boundedness of the solution operator. Rate independence in reaction-diffusion systems complicates the analysis, since the reaction term acts no longer local in time. This demands careful estimates when working with semigroup methods. In the second part, we show Lipschitz continuity and Hadamard differentiability of the solution operator. We use fixed point arguments to derive a representation for the derivative in terms of the evolution system. Finally, we apply our results to an optimal control problem in which the source term acts as a control function and show existence of an optimal solution.

In this work we discuss the problem of identifying sound sources from pressure measurements with a Bayesian approach. The acoustics are modelled by the Helmholtz equation and the goal is to get information about the number, strength and position of the sound sources, under the assumption that measurements of the acoustic pressure are noisy. We propose a problem specific prior distribution of the number, the amplitudes and positions of the sound sources and algorithms to compute an approximation of the associated posterior. We also discuss a finite element discretization of the Helmholtz equation for the practical computation and prove convergence rates of the resulting discretized posterior to the true posterior. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical experiments, which indicate that the proven rates are sharp.

This paper is concerned with the optimal control of hysteresis-reaction-diffusion systems. We study a control problem with two sorts of controls, namely distributed control functions, or controls which act on a part of the boundary of the domain. The state equation is given by a reaction-diffusion system with the additional challenge that the reaction term includes a scalar stop operator. We choose a variational inequality to represent the hysteresis. In this paper, we prove first order necessary optimality conditions. In particular, under certain regularity assumptions, we derive results about the continuity properties of the adjoint system. For the case of distributed controls, we improve the optimality conditions and show uniqueness of the adjoint variables. We employ the optimality system to prove higher regularity of the optimal solutions of our problem. Finally, we derive regularity properties of the value function of a perturbed control problem when the set of controls is restricted. The specific feature of rate-independent hysteresis in the state equation leads to difficulties concerning the analysis of the solution operator. Non-locality in time of the Hadamard derivative of the control-to-state operator complicates the derivation of an adjoint system.

In this work we consider two-dimensional critical manifolds in planar fast-slow systems near fold and so-called canard (="duck") points. These higher-dimension, and lower-codimension, situation is directly motivated by the case of hysteresis operators limiting onto fast-slow systems as well as by systems with constraints. We use geometric desingularization via blow-up to investigate two situations for the slow flow: generic fold (or jump) points, and canards in one-parameter families. We directly prove that the fold case is analogous to the classical fold involving a one-dimensional critical manifold. However, for the canard case, considerable differences and difficulties appear. Orbits can get trapped in the two-dimensional manifold after a canard-like passage thereby preventing small-amplitude oscillations generated by the singular Hopf bifurcation occurring in the classical canard case, as well as certain jump escapes.