On the optimal control of systems governed by nonlinear volterra equations

Existence theorems are stated and proved for optimal control problems monitored by a nonlinear Volterra-type integral equation. Growth conditions are taken into consideration which ensure the needed compactness on the set of trajectories and entail the existence of the usual optimal solutions for the given problem. Weak or approximate solutions are taken into consideration in a subsequent paper.The author would like to express his appreciation to Professor L. Cesari and Professor M. B. Suryanarayana for many helpful conversations and suggestions for the improvement of earlier versions of this paper.     

Almost-periodic solutions for Riccati equations of stochastic control

We consider an average quadratic cost criteria for affine stochastic differential equations with almost-periodic coefficients. Under stabilizability and detectability conditions we show that the Riccati equation associated with the quadratic control problem has a unique almost-periodic solution. In the periodic case the corresponding result is proved in [4].     

Stochastic systems in Riemannian manifolds

A formulation of stochastic systems in a Riemannian manifold is given by stochastic differential equations in the tangent bundle of the manifold. Brownian motion is constructed in a compact Riemannian manifold as well as the horizontal lift of this process to the bundle of orthonormal frames. The solution of some stochastic differential equations in the tangent bundle of the manifold is defined by the transformation of the measure for the manifold-valued Brownian motion by a suitable Radon-Nikodym derivative. Real-valued stochastic integrals are defined for this Brownian motion using parallelism along the Brownian paths. A stochastic control problem is formulated and solved for these stochastic systems where a suitable convexity condition is assumed.This research was supported by NSF Grants Nos. GK-32136, ENG-75-06562, and MCS-76-01695.The author wishes to thank D. Gromoll, J. Simons, and J. Thorpe for some helpful conversations on differential geometry.     

Comparison theorems for stochastic evolution equations

This paper establishes an anticipating stochastic differential equation of parabolic type for the expectation of the solution of a stochastic differential equation conditioned on complete knowledge of the path of one of its components. Conversely, it is shown that any appropriately regular solution of this stochastic p.d.e. must be given by the conditional expectation. These results generalize the connection, known as the Feynman-Kac formula, between parabolic equations and expectations of functions of a diffusion. As an application, we derive an equation for the unnormalized smoothing law of a filtering problem with observation feedback.     

Global existence of solutions for stochastic impulsive differential equations

In this paper we obtain some results on the global existence of solution to Itô stochastic impulsive differential equations in M([0,∞),? ⁿ ) which denotes the family of ? ⁿ -valued stochastic processes x satisfying sup_t∈[0,∞) \(\mathbb{E}\)|x(t)|² < ∞ under non-Lipschitz coefficients. The Schaefer fixed point theorem is employed to achieve the desired result. An example is provided to illustrate the obtained results.     

Existence theorems in optimal control problems without convexity assumptions

We give existence theorems of solutions for Lagrange and Bolza problems of optimal control. These results are obtained without convexity assumptions on the cost function with respect to the control variable. We extend a Cesari's theorem to cost functions which are nonlinear with respect to the space variable and to problems which are governed by a differential inclusion. Moreover, we consider the case where the control variable belongs to a space of measurable functions and the case where this variable belongs to a Lebesgue space.     

Feedback control systems governed by evolution equations

ABSTRACT

The goal of this paper is to provide systematic approaches to study the feedback control systems governed by evolution equations in separable reflexive Banach spaces. We firstly give some existence results of mild solutions for the equations by applying the Banach's fixed point theorem and the Leray–Schauder alternative fixed point theorem with Lipschitz conditions and some types of boundedness conditions. Next, by using the Filippove theorem and the Cesari property, a new set of sufficient assumptions are formulated to guarantee the existence of feasible pairs for the feedback control systems. Some existence results for an optimal control problem are given. Finally, we apply our main result to obtain a controllability result for semilinear evolution equations and existence results for a class of differential variational inequalities and Clarke's subdifferential inclusions.     

On a class of stochastic differential equations arising from the stochastic approximation theory

The paper dealt with generalized stochastic approximation procedures of Robbins-Monro type. We consider these procedures as strong solutions of some stochastic differential equations with respect to semimartingales and investigate their almost sure convergence and mean square convergence     

Duality theorem for the stochastic optimal control problem

We prove a duality theorem for the stochastic optimal control problem with a convex cost function and show that the minimizer satisfies a class of forward–backward stochastic differential equations. As an application, we give an approach, from the duality theorem, to h$h$-path processes for diffusion processes.     

Necessary conditions for optimal controls for systems governed by parabolic partial delay-differential equations in divergence form with first boundary conditions

In this paper, we consider the question of necessary conditions for optimality for systems governed by second-order parabolic partial delay-differential equations with first boundary conditions. All the coefficients of the system are assumed bounded measurable and contain controls and delays in their arguments. The second-order parabolic partial delay-differential equation is in divergence form. In Theorem 4.1, we present results on the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions in the sense of Ladyzhenskaya-Solonnikov-Ural'ceva for this class of systems. An integral maximum principle and its point-wise version for the corresponding controlled system are established in Theorem 5.1 and Corollary 5.1, respectively.The authors wish to thank Dr. E. Noussair for his stimulating discussion and valuable comments in the preparation of this paper. Further, they also wish to acknowledge the referee of the paper for his valuable suggestions and comments. The discussion presented in Section 6 is in response to his suggestions.     

Energy methods for stochastic differential equations

This article is devoted to the existence of strong solutions to stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Compared with Ito's theory, we relax the assumptions on the volatility term and replace the global Lipschitz continuity condition with a local Lipschitz continuity condition and a Hoelder continuity condition. In particular, our general SDE covers the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross SDE as a special case. We note that the general weak existence theory presumably extends to our general SDE (although the explicit time dependence of the drift term and the volatility term might require some extra considerations). However, avoiding weak existence theory we prove the existence of a strong solution directly using a priori estimates (the so-called energy estimates) derived from the SDE. The benefit of this approach is that the argument only requires some basic knowledge about stochastic and functional analysis. Moreover, the underlying principle has developed to become one of the cornerstones of the modern theory of partial differential equations (PDEs). In this sense, the general goal of this article is not just to establish the existence of a strong solution to the SDE under consideration but rather to introduce a new principle in the context of SDEs that has already proven to be successful in the context of PDEs.     

Right-continuous solutions of systems of stochastic integral equations

Unique solutions are shown to exist for systems of stochastic integral equations which allow right-continuous semimartingales (also known as quasimartingales) as differentials.     

Asymptotic analysis of an interior optimal control problem governed by Stokes equations

This article introduces an interior optimal control problem (OCP) in a two-dimensional domain with a highly oscillatory boundary governed by the stationary Stokes equations. We consider the periodic controls in the oscillating region of the domain and use the unfolding operators to characterize the optimal controls. We establish the convergences of optimal control, state, and pressure in a suitable space to the ones of the limit system in a fixed domain.     

Optimal approximation of stochastic differential equations by adaptive step-size control

We study the pathwise (strong) approximation of scalar stochastic differential equations with respect to the global error in the -norm. For equations with additive noise we establish a sharp lower error bound in the class of arbitrary methods that use a fixed number of observations of the driving Brownian motion. As a consequence, higher order methods do not exist if the global error is analyzed. We introduce an adaptive step-size control for the Euler scheme which performs asymptotically optimally. In particular, the new method is more efficient than an equidistant discretization. This superiority is confirmed in simulation experiments for equations with additive noise, as well as for general scalar equations.

     

Khasminskii-type theorems for stochastic functional differential equations with infinite delay

The classical Khasminskii-type theorem gives a powerful tool to examine the global existence of solutions for stochastic differential equations without the linear growth condition by the use of the Lyapunov functions. However, there is no such result for stochastic functional equations with infinite delay. The main aim of this paper is to establish the existence-and-uniqueness theorems of global solutions for stochastic functional differential equations with infinite delay.     

Existence,uniqueness, and numerical approximations for stochastic Burgers equations

Abstract

In this article, we propose an all-in-one statement which includes existence, uniqueness, regularity, and numerical approximations of mild solutions for a class of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) with non-globally monotone nonlinearities. The proof of this result exploits the properties of an existing fully explicit space-time discrete approximation scheme, in particular the fact that it satisfies suitable a priori estimates. We also obtain almost sure and strong convergence of the approximation scheme to the mild solutions of the considered SPDEs. We conclude by applying the main result of the article to the stochastic Burgers equations with additive space-time white noise.     

Necessary conditions for optimal singular stochastic control problems

In this paper, necessary conditions of optimality, in the form of a maximum principle, are obtained for singular stochastic control problems. This maximum principle is derived for a state process satisfying a general stochastic differential equation where the coefficient associated to the control process can be dependent on the state, extending earlier results of the literature.     

A posteriori error estimates of spectral method for optimal control problems governed by parabolic equations

In this paper,we investigate the Legendre Galerkin spectral approximation of quadratic optimal control problems governed by parabolic equations.A spectral approximation scheme for the parabolic optimal control problem is presented.We obtain a posteriori error estimates of the approximated solutions for both the state and the control.     

Optimal control of systems governed by a class of nonlinear evolution equations in a reflexive Banach space

The paper presents a closure theorem for the attainable trajectories of a class of control systems governed by a large class of nonlinear evolution equations in reflexive Banach spaces. Several existence theorems for optimal controls are proven that include a terminal control problem, a time-optimal control problem, and a special Bolza problem. Some results of independent interest are also presented.This work was supported in part by the National Research Council of Canada under Grant No. 7109.The authors would like to thank Professor L. Cesari for pointing out that joint continuity off is required for the setsG andR to satisfy the upper semicontinuity property (Theorems 5.1 and 5.2).