Abstract
In this paper, we solve the problem of rapid exponential stabilization for coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) and 1 - d unstable linear heat diffusion. The control acts at a boundary of the heat domain and the heat equation enters in the ODE by Dirichlet connection. We show that the infinite dimensional backstepping transformation introduced recently for stabilization of coupled linear ODE-PDE can deal with a nonlinear ODE and obtain a global stabilization result. Our result is innovative and no similar result can be found in the literature as it combines the three following factors, i) nonlinear term in the ODE subsystem, ii) unstable PDE subsystem and iii) mixed boundary condition. Not only this, the techniques used in this work can provide answers to fundamental questions, such as the stabilization of coupled systems where both subsystems may contain nonlinear terms.