Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study an optimal control problem for a semilinear elliptic partial differential equation with a linear combination of Dirac measures as a forcing term; the control variable corresponds to the amplitude of such singular sources. We analyze the existence of optimal solutions and derive first- and, necessary and sufficient, second-order optimality conditions. We develop a solution technique that discretizes the state and adjoint equations with continuous piecewise linear finite elements; the control variable is already discrete. We analyze the convergence properties of discretizations and obtain, in two dimensions, an a priori error estimate for the underlying approximation of an optimal control variable. © The Author(s) 2023.