Inertial Gradient-Like Dynamical System Controlled by a Stabilizing Term

Let H be a real Hilbert space and let be a function that we wish to minimize. For any potential and any control function which tends to zero as t+, we study the asymptotic behavior of the trajectories of the following dissipative system: The (S) system can be viewed as a classical heavy ball with friction equation (Refs. 1–2) plus the control term (t)U(x(t)). If is convex and (t) tends to zero fast enough, each trajectory of (S) converges weakly to some element of argmin . This is a generalization of the Alvarez theorem (Ref. 1). On the other hand, assuming that is a slow control and that and U are convex, the (S) trajectories tend to minimize U over argmin when t+. This asymptotic selection property generalizes a result due to Attouch and Czarnecki (Ref. 3) in the case where U(x)=|x|²/2. A large part of our results are stated for the following wider class of systems:where is a C¹ function.