Output Regulation for Systems on Matrix Lie-group

This paper deals with the problem of output regulation for systems defined on matrix Lie-Groups. Reference trajectories to be tracked are supposed to be generated by an exosystem, defined on the same Lie-Group of the controlled system, and only partial relative error measurements are supposed to be available. These measurements are assumed to be invariant and associated to a group action on a homogeneous space of the state space. In the spirit of the internal model principle the proposed control structure embeds a copy of the exosystem kinematic. This control problem is motivated by many real applications fields in aerospace, robotics, projective geometry, to name a few, in which systems are defined on matrix Lie-groups and references in the associated homogenous spaces

Flows on quaternionic-Kaehler and very special real manifolds

BPS solutions of 5-dimensional supergravity correspond to certain gradient flows on the product M x N of a quaternionic-Kaehler manifold M of negative scalar curvature and a very special real manifold N of dimension n >=0. Such gradient flows are generated by the `energy function' f = P^2, where P is a (bundle-valued) moment map associated to n+1 Killing vector fields on M. We calculate the Hessian of f at critical points and derive some properties of its spectrum for general quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds. For the homogeneous quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds we prove more specific results depending on the structure of the isotropy group. For example, we show that there always exists a Killing vector field vanishing at a point p in M such that the Hessian of f at p has split signature. This generalizes results obtained recently for the complex hyperbolic plane (universal hypermultiplet) in the context of 5-dimensional supergravity. For symmetric quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds we show the existence of non-degenerate local extrema of f, for appropriate Killing vector fields. On the other hand, for the non-symmetric homogeneous quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds we find degenerate local minima.Comment: 22 page

Maximal representations of complex hyperbolic lattices in SU(m,n)

Let $\Gamma$ denote a lattice in $SU(1,p)$, with $p$ greater than 1. We show that there exists no Zariski dense maximal representation with target $SU(m,n)$ if $n>m>1$. The proof is geometric and is based on the study of the rigidity properties of the geometry whose points are isotropic $m$-subspaces of a complex vector space $V$ endowed with a Hermitian metric $h$ of signature $(m,n)$ and whose lines correspond to the $2m$ dimensional subspaces of $V$ on which the restriction of $h$ has signature $(m,m)$.Comment: 41 pages, 2 figures, accepted for pubblication in GAF