General maximum principles for optimal control problems of stochastic Volterra integral equations

Abstract: Optimal control problems of forward stochastic Volterra integral equations (SVIEs) are formulated and studied. When control region is arbitrary subset of Euclidean space and control enters into the diffusion, necessary conditions of Pontryagin's type for optimal controls are established via spike variation. Our conclusions naturally cover the analogue of stochastic differential equations (SDEs), and our developed methodology drops the reliance on It^o formula and second-order adjoint equations. Some new features, that are concealed in the SDEs framework, are revealed in our situation. For example, instead of using second-order adjoint equations, it is more appropriate to introduce second-order adjoint processes. Moreover, the conventional way of using one second-order adjoint equation is inadequate here. In other words, two adjoint processes, which just merge into the solution of second-order adjoint equation in SDEs situation, are actually required and proposed in our setting.