On the difficulty of deciding asymptotic stability of cubic homogeneous vector fields

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

It is well-known that asymptotic stability (AS) of homogeneous polynomial vector fields of degree one (i.e., linear systems) can be decided in polynomial time e.g. by searching for a quadratic Lyapunov function. Since homogeneous vector fields of even degree can never be AS, the next interesting degree to consider is equal to three. In this paper, we prove that deciding AS of homogeneous cubic vector fields is strongly NP-hard and pose the question of determining whether it is even decidable. As a byproduct of the reduction that establishes our NP-hardness result, we obtain a Lyapunov-inspired technique for proving positivity of forms. We also show that for asymptotically stable homogeneous cubic vector fields in as few as two variables, the minimum degree of a polynomial Lyapunov function can be arbitrarily large. Finally, we show that there is no monotonicity in the degree of polynomial Lyapunov functions that prove AS; i.e., a homogeneous cubic vector field with no homogeneous polynomial Lyapunov function of some degree d can very well have a homogeneous polynomial Lyapunov function of degree less than d.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2012 American Control Conference, ACC 2012
Pages3334-3339
Number of pages6
StatePublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event2012 American Control Conference, ACC 2012 - Montreal, QC, Canada
Duration: Jun 27 2012Jun 29 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the American Control Conference
ISSN (Print)0743-1619

Other

Other2012 American Control Conference, ACC 2012
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal, QC
Period6/27/126/29/12

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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