Pontryagin Maximum Principle and Stokes Theorem

We present a new geometric unfolding of a prototype problem of optimal control theory, the Mayer problem. This approach is crucially based on the Stokes Theorem and yields to a necessary and sufficient condition that characterizes the optimal solutions, from which the classical Pontryagin Maximum Principle is derived in a new insightful way. It also suggests generalizations in diverse directions of such famous principle.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures; we corrected a few minor misprints, added a couple of references and inserted a new section (Sect. 7); to appear in Journal of Geometry and Physic

Invariant Carnot-Caratheodory metrics on S3S^3, SO(3)SO(3), SL(2)SL(2) and lens spaces

In this paper we study the invariant Carnot-Caratheodory metrics on $SU(2)\simeq S^3$, $SO(3)$ and $SL(2)$ induced by their Cartan decomposition and by the Killing form. Beside computing explicitly geodesics and conjugate loci, we compute the cut loci (globally) and we give the expression of the Carnot-Caratheodory distance as the inverse of an elementary function. We then prove that the metric given on $SU(2)$ projects on the so called lens spaces $L(p,q)$. Also for lens spaces, we compute the cut loci (globally). For $SU(2)$ the cut locus is a maximal circle without one point. In all other cases the cut locus is a stratified set. To our knowledge, this is the first explicit computation of the whole cut locus in sub-Riemannian geometry, except for the trivial case of the Heisenberg group

Low-Thrust Lyapunov to Lyapunov and Halo to Halo with L2L^2-Minimization

In this work, we develop a new method to design energy minimum low-thrust missions (L2-minimization). In the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem, the knowledge of invariant manifolds helps us initialize an indirect method solving a transfer mission between periodic Lyapunov orbits. Indeed, using the PMP, the optimal control problem is solved using Newton-like algorithms finding the zero of a shooting function. To compute a Lyapunov to Lyapunov mission, we first compute an admissible trajectory using a heteroclinic orbit between the two periodic orbits. It is then used to initialize a multiple shooting method in order to release the constraint. We finally optimize the terminal points on the periodic orbits. Moreover, we use continuation methods on position and on thrust, in order to gain robustness. A more general Halo to Halo mission, with different energies, is computed in the last section without heteroclinic orbits but using invariant manifolds to initialize shooting methods with a similar approach