Controllability of a parabolic system with a diffusive interface

— We consider a linear parabolic transmission problem across an interface of codimension one in a bounded domain or on a Riemannian manifold, where the transmission conditions involve an additional parabolic operator on the interface. This system is an idealization of a three-layer model in which the central layer has a small thickness δ. We prove a Carleman estimate in the neighborhood of the interface for an associated elliptic operator by means of partial estimates in several microlocal regions. In turn, from the Carleman estimate, we obtain a spectral inequality that yields the null-controllability of the parabolic system. These results are uniform with respect to the small parameter δ.