A general theorem on error estimates with application to a quasilinear elliptic optimal control problem

A theorem on error estimates for smooth nonlinear programming problems in Banach spaces is proved that can be used to derive optimal error estimates for optimal control problems. This theorem is applied to a class of optimal control problems for quasilinear elliptic equations. The state equation is approximated by a finite element scheme, while different discretization methods are used for the control functions. The distance of locally optimal controls to their discrete approximations is estimated. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012