On the Ball-Marsden-Slemrod obstruction for bilinear control systems
Nabile Boussaid (LMB), Marco Caponigro (M2N), Thomas Chambrion, (SPHINX, IECL)

TL;DR
This paper extends a well-known result on the limitations of controlling bilinear systems in infinite-dimensional spaces to include $L^1$-controls, highlighting fundamental obstructions to controllability.
Contribution
It generalizes the Ball--Marsden--Slemrod obstruction to the case of $L^1$-controls in infinite-dimensional bilinear control systems.
Findings
Obstruction to controllability persists with $L^1$-controls.
Extension of classical results to broader control spaces.
Highlights fundamental limitations in infinite-dimensional control systems.
Abstract
In this paper we present an extension to the case of -controls of a famous result by Ball--Marsden--Slemrod on the obstruction to the controllability of bilinear control systems in infinite dimensional spaces.
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Taxonomy
TopicsStability and Controllability of Differential Equations · Advanced Mathematical Physics Problems · Advanced Mathematical Modeling in Engineering
On the Ball-Marsden-Slemrod obstruction for bilinear control systems
Nabile Boussaïd
Marco Caponigro
Thomas Chambrion
Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Besançon, UMR 6623
Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Besançon, France
Équipe M2N
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France
Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Inria, IECL, Nancy, France
Abstract
In this paper we present an extension to the case of -controls of a famous result by Ball–Marsden–Slemrod on the obstruction to the controllability of bilinear control systems in infinite dimensional spaces.
I INTRODUCTION
I-A Bilinear control systems
Let be a Banach space, a linear operator in with domain , a linear bounded operator and an element in .
We consider a following bilinear control system on
[TABLE]
where is a scalar function representing the control.
Assumption 1
The pair of linear operators in satisfies
the operator generates a -semigroup of linear bounded operators on . 2.
the operator is bounded.
Definition 1
Let satisfy Assumption 1 and let . A function is a mild solution of (1) if for every in ,
[TABLE]
Equation (2) is often called Duhamel formula. Existence and uniqueness of mild solutions for equation (1) is given by the following result (see, for instance, Proposition 2.1 and Remark 2.7 in [BMS82]).
Proposition 1
Assume that satisfies Assumption 1. Then, for every in , for every in , there exists a unique mild solution to the Cauchy problem (1). Moreover, for every in , the end-point mapping is continuous.
Definition 2
Assume that satisfies Assumption 1 and let be a subset of . For every in , the attainable set from with controls in is defined as
[TABLE]
Our main result is the following property of the attainable set of system (1) with controls.
Theorem 2
Assume that satisfies Assumption 1. Then, for every in , the attainable set from with controls is contained in a countable union of compacts subsets of .
I-B The Ball–Marsden–Slemrod obstruction
Our main result, Theorem 2 is an extension of the well-known Ball–Marsden–Slemrod obstruction to controllability (see also [ILT06]) which is as follows.
Theorem 3** (Theorem 3.6 in [BMS82])**
Assume that satisfies Assumption 1. Then, for every in , the attainable set from with controls, , is contained in a countable union of compacts subsets of .
A consequence of Theorem 3 to the framework of the conservative bilinear Schrödinger equation is given by Turinici.
Theorem 4** (Theorem 1 in [Tur00])**
Assume that satisfies Assumption 1. Then, for every in , the set is contained in a countable union of compacts subsets of .
Theorems 2 and 3 are basically empty in the case in which is finite dimensional, since, in this case, itself is a countable union of compact sets. On the other hand, when is infinite dimensional, these results represent a strong topological obstruction to the exact controllability. Indeed, compact subsets of an infinite dimensional Banach space have empty interiors and so is a countable union of closed subsets with empty interiors (as a consequence of Baire Theorem).
Whether the non-controllability result of Ball, Marsden, and Slemrod, Theorem 3 holds for control has been an open question for decades. Indeed, the proof of Theorem 3 does not apply directly to the case. To see what fails let us briefly recall the method used in [BMS82] for the proof of Theorem 3. The first step is to write
[TABLE]
Hence it is sufficient to prove that, for every in , the set
[TABLE]
has compact closure in . To this end, one considers a sequence in , associated with a sequence of times in and a sequence of controls in the ball of radius of . By compactness of , up to extraction, one can assume that tends to in . By Banach–Alaoglu–Bourbaki Theorem, the balls of are weakly (sequentially) compact and, hence, up to extraction, one can assume that converges weakly in to some . The hard step of the proof (Lemma 3.7 in [BMS82]) is then to show that tends to as tends to infinity.
A crucial point in the proof of Theorem 3 given in [BMS82] is the fact that the closed balls of , are weakly sequentially compact. This is no longer true for the balls of , and this prevents a direct extension of the proof of Theorem 3 to Theorem 2. Here we present a brief and self-contained proof of Theorem 2 mainly based on Dyson expansions and basics compacteness properties on Banach spaces.
An alternative proof of Theorem 3, not relying on the reflectiveness of the set of admissible controls, has been recently given in [BCC17]. The proof applies to a very large class of controls (namely, Radon measures) which contains locally integrable functions, and for its generality it is technically quite involved, in contrast with the simplicity of the underlying ideas. It applies also, with minor modifications, to nonlinear problems [CT18].
I-C Content
In this note we present a simple proof of Theorem 2. However, historical reasons have made different communities use incompatible terminologies and, in order to avoid ambiguities, we present in Section II a quick reminder of basic facts in Banach topologies. Section III gives a short introduction to the classical Dyson expansion (Section III-A) and the proof of an instrumental compactness property (Section III-B). We conclude in Section IV with the proof of Theorem 2.
II BASIC FACTS ABOUT TOPOLOGY IN BANACH SPACES
II-A Notations
The Banach space is endowed with norm . For every in and every , denotes the ball of center and of radius :
[TABLE]
In the following, all we need to know about generators of -semigroup is the classical result stated in Proposition 5 (see Chapter VII of [HP57]).
Proposition 5
Assume that generates a -semigroup. Then there exist such that for every .
II-B Compact subset of Banach spaces
Definition 3
Let be a Banach space and be a subset of . A family is an open cover of if is open in for every in and .
Definition 4
Let be a Banach space. A subset of is said to be compact if from any open cover of , it is possible to extract a finite cover of .
Definition 5
Let be a Banach space. A subset of is said to be sequentially compact if from any sequence taking value in , it is possible to extract a subsequence converging in .
Definition 6
Let be a Banach space. A subset of is said to be totally bounded if for every , there exist and a finite family in such that
[TABLE]
Proposition 6
Let be a Banach space. For every subset of , the following assertions are equivalent:
* is compact.* 2. 2.
* is sequentially compact.* 3. 3.
* is complete and totally bounded.* 4. 4.
* is closed and totally bounded.*
Proposition 7
Let be a Banach space, in and a finite family of compact subsets of . Then, the finite sum
[TABLE]
is compact as well.
Proposition 8
Let be a Banach space, in and a finite family of totally bounded subsets of . Then, the finite sum
[TABLE]
is totally bounded as well.
Proposition 9
Let be a Banach space, and satisfies Assumption 1. Define the mapping
[TABLE]
Then, for every totally bounded subset of , the set is totally bounded as well.
Proof:
We claim that is jointly continuous in its two variables. Indeed, for every in , for every ,
[TABLE]
This last quantity tends to zero as tends to . As a consequence, is continuous (as composition of continuous functions).
If is totally bounded, the topological closure of is compact (because the ambient space is complete). Hence is compact. By continuity, is compact, hence is totally bounded. The set , which is contained in , is, therefore, totally bounded as well. ∎
II-C Partition of unity in Banach spaces
Definition 7
Let a Banach space. A family of points of is locally finite if for every in and every , the cardinality of the set
[TABLE]
is finite.
Definition 8
Let be a Banach space, be a subset of , and be an open cover of . A family of continuous functions from to is called a partition of the unity of adapted to the cover if
for every , for every ;
* for every .*
Proposition 10
Let be a Banach space, a subset of , , a locally finite family of points in such that . Then, there exists a partition of the unity adapted to the open cover of .
Moreover, if a family is a partition of the unity adapted to the open cover , then for every in , .
Proof:
We first prove the existence of a partition of the unity adapted to the open covering of . To this end, we define, for every in , the continuous functions by
[TABLE]
Since the family is locally finite, the sum converges for every in . Moreover, since , the function does not vanish on . For every in , we define by
[TABLE]
and the family is a partition of the unity adapted to the open cover of .
We now prove the second point of Proposition 10. Let be a partition of unity of adapted to the cover . Then, for every in ,
[TABLE]
By construction, as soon as . Hence,
[TABLE]
which concludes the proof. ∎
III DYSON EXPANSION
III-A The Dyson Operators
For every in , , and we define the linear bounded operator recursively by
[TABLE]
for every in . We have the following estimate on the norm of the operator.
Proposition 11
For every in , , and
[TABLE]
Proof:
We prove the result by induction on in . For the result clearly follows from Proposition 5. Assume that the result holds for . Then, for every in ,
[TABLE]
The last inequality follows from Proposition 5. We conclude the proof by induction on . ∎
III-B A compactness property
Lemma 12
For every in , and , and in the set
[TABLE]
is totally bounded
Proof:
We prove the result by induction on in . For , consider and let be a sequence in . Then there exists a sequence such that for every . Up to extraction since is compact. By definition of -semigroup, . This proves that is sequentially compact, hence compact and, in particular, totally bounded (Proposition 6).
Assume that, for , is totally bounded. By Proposition 9, the set
[TABLE]
is totally bounded as well.
Let be given and define . Since is totally bounded, there exists a finite family in such that
[TABLE]
Let be a partition of the unity adapted to the cover of . Such a partition of the unity exists by Proposition 10, and moreover, for every in , we have
[TABLE]
Applying the inequality (4) with , we get, for every in and every such that ,
[TABLE]
Multiplying by and integrating for in , one gets for
[TABLE]
that is
[TABLE]
The set is compact by Proposition 7 and, hence, totally bounded. Then there exists a finite family such that
[TABLE]
From (III-B) and (6), one deduces that
[TABLE]
This proves that is totally bounded and concludes the proof. ∎
III-C Convergence of the Dyson expansion
Proposition 13
For every in , , and
[TABLE]
Proof:
The proof follows the proof of [BMS82, Theorem 2.5]. By Duhamel formula (2) and Proposition 5,
[TABLE]
and the conclusion follows by Gronwall lemma (see [BMS82, Lemma 2.6]). ∎
Proposition 14
For every in , in , , and in
[TABLE]
Proof:
Consider
[TABLE]
and recall that tends to zero as tends to infinity (Proposition 11). ∎
Proposition 15
For every in , in , , and in
[TABLE]
Proof:
Applying iteratively -times Duhamel formula (2), one gets
[TABLE]
Hence, for every ,
[TABLE]
and the result follow from Proposition 14 as tends to . ∎
IV PROOF OF THEOREM 2
We proceed now to the proof of Theorem 2. First of all, notice that, for every in ,
[TABLE]
and it is enough to prove that, for every and in , the set
[TABLE]
is totally bounded.
Let . From the convergence of the Dyson expansion (Proposition 15) and the bound on the operators (Proposition 11), there exists a integer such that
[TABLE]
for every in and every such that . For each the sets , defined by (3), are totally bounded (Lemma 12), hence their sum
[TABLE]
is totally bounded as well (Proposition 8). Hence there exists a family of points of such that
[TABLE]
Gathering (7) and (8), one gets
[TABLE]
which concludes the proof of Theorem 2.
V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been supported by the project DISQUO of the DEFI InFIniTI 2017 by CNRS and the QUACO project by ANR 17-CE40-0007-01.
The reference list from the paper itself. Each links out to its DOI / PubMed record.
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- 4[HP 57] Einar Hille and Ralph Phillips. Functional Analysis and Semi-Groups (second edition) , volume 31 of Colloquium Publications . American Mathematical Society, 1957.
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