Exact controllability of infinite dimensional systems with controls of minimal norm

The paper deals with the exact controllability of a semilinear system in a separable Hilbert space. A bounded linear part is considered and a linear control introduced. The state space is compactly embedded in a Banach space and the nonlinear term is continuous in its state variable in the norm of the Banach space. An infinite sequence of finite dimen- sional controllability problems is introduced and the solution is obtained by a limiting procedure. To the best of our knowledge, the method is new in controllability theory. An application to an integro-differential system in euclidean spaces completes the discussion.