First-order differentiability properties of a class of equality constrained optimal value functions with applications

Abstract

In this paper we study the right differentiability of a parametric infimum function over a parametric set defined by equality constraints. We present a new theorem with sufficient conditions for the right differentiability with respect to the parameter. Target applications are nonconvex objective functions with equality constraints arising in optimal control and shape optimisation. The theorem makes use of the averaged adjoint approach in conjunction with the variational approach of Kunisch, Ito and Peichl. We provide two examples of our abstract result: (a) a shape optimisation problem involving a semilinear partial differential equation which exhibits infinitely many solutions, (b) a finite dimensional quadratic function subject to a nonlinear equation.