On Carleman estimates for elliptic and parabolic operators. Applications to unique continuation and control of parabolic equations∗∗∗
Local and global Carleman estimates play a central role in the study of some partial differential equations regarding questions such as unique continuation and controllability. We survey and prove such estimates in the case of elliptic and parabolic operators by means of semi-classical microlocal techniques. Optimality results for these estimates and some of their consequences are presented. We point out the connexion of these optimality results to the local phase-space geometry after conjugation...