72 research outputs found
Geometry of Maslov cycles
We introduce the notion of induced Maslov cycle, which describes and unifies geometrical and topological invariants of many apparently unrelated situations, from real algebraic geometry to sub-Riemannian geometry
Quantum Control Landscapes
Numerous lines of experimental, numerical and analytical evidence indicate
that it is surprisingly easy to locate optimal controls steering quantum
dynamical systems to desired objectives. This has enabled the control of
complex quantum systems despite the expense of solving the Schrodinger equation
in simulations and the complicating effects of environmental decoherence in the
laboratory. Recent work indicates that this simplicity originates in universal
properties of the solution sets to quantum control problems that are
fundamentally different from their classical counterparts. Here, we review
studies that aim to systematically characterize these properties, enabling the
classification of quantum control mechanisms and the design of globally
efficient quantum control algorithms.Comment: 45 pages, 15 figures; International Reviews in Physical Chemistry,
Vol. 26, Iss. 4, pp. 671-735 (2007
On the Alexandrov Topology of sub-Lorentzian Manifolds
It is commonly known that in Riemannian and sub-Riemannian Geometry, the
metric tensor on a manifold defines a distance function. In Lorentzian
Geometry, instead of a distance function it provides causal relations and the
Lorentzian time-separation function. Both lead to the definition of the
Alexandrov topology, which is linked to the property of strong causality of a
space-time. We studied three possible ways to define the Alexandrov topology on
sub-Lorentzian manifolds, which usually give different topologies, but agree in
the Lorentzian case. We investigated their relationships to each other and the
manifold's original topology and their link to causality.Comment: 20 page
On the geometry of the set of symmetric matrices with repeated eigenvalues
We investigate some geometric properties of the real algebraic variety \u394 of symmetric matrices with repeated eigenvalues. We explicitly compute the volume of its intersection with the sphere and prove a Eckart\u2013Young\u2013Mirsky-type theorem for the distance function from a generic matrix to points in \u394. We exhibit connections of our study to real algebraic geometry (computing the Euclidean distance degree of \u394) and random matrix theory
Almost exponential maps and integrability results for a class of horizontally regular vector fields
We show a higher order integrability theorem for distributions generated by a
family of vector fields under a horizontal regularity assumption on their
coefficients. We use as chart a class of almost exponential maps which we
discuss in detailsComment: arXiv admin note: material from arXiv:1106.2410v1, now three separate
articles arXiv:1106.2410v2, arXiv:1201.5228, arXiv:1201.520
Geometry of optimal control problems and Hamiltonian systems
We explain a general variational and dynamical nature of nice and powerful concepts and results mainly known in the narrow framework of Riemannian geometry. This concerns Jacobi fields, Morse's index formula, Levi Civita connection, Riemannian curvature and related topics. There is an evidence that the described results are just parts of a united beautiful subject to be discovered on the crossroads of Differential Geometry, Dynamical Systems, and Optimal Control Theory
Sub-Riemannian curvature in contact geometry
We compare different notions of curvature on contact sub-Riemannian manifolds.
In particular we introduce canonical curvatures as the coefficients of the sub-Riemannian Jacobi
equation. The main result is that all these coefficients are encoded in the asymptotic expansion
of the horizontal derivatives of the sub-Riemannian distance. We explicitly compute their
expressions in terms of the standard tensors of contact geometry. As an application of these
results, we prove a version of the sub-Riemannian Bonnet-Myers theorem that applies to any
contact manifold, with special attention to contact Yang-Mills structures
On conjugate times of LQ optimal control problems
Motivated by the study of linear quadratic optimal control problems, we consider a dynamical
system with a constant, quadratic Hamiltonian, and we characterize the number of conjugate times
in terms of the spectrum of the Hamiltonian vector field H . We prove the following dichotomy: the
number of conjugate times is identically zero or grows to innity. The latter case occurs if and only
if H has at least one Jordan block of odd dimension corresponding to a purely imaginary eigenvalue.
As a byproduct, we obtain bounds from below on the number of conjugate times contained in an
interval in terms of the spectrum of H
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