English

Root locii for systems defined on Hilbert spaces

Analysis of PDEs 2014-09-26 v1

Abstract

The root locus is an important tool for analysing the stability and time constants of linear finite-dimensional systems as a parameter, often the gain, is varied. However, many systems are modelled by partial differential equations or delay equations. These systems evolve on an infinite-dimensional space and their transfer functions are not rational. In this paper a rigorous definition of the root locus for infinite-dimensional systems is given and it is shown that the root locus is well-defined for a large class of infinite-dimensional systems. As for finite-dimensional systems, any limit point of a branch of the root locus is a zero. However, the asymptotic behaviour can be quite different from that for finite-dimensional systems. This point is illustrated with a number of examples. It is shown that the familiar pole-zero interlacing property for collocated systems with a Hermitian state matrix extends to infinite-dimensional systems with self-adjoint generator. This interlacing property is also shown to hold for collocated systems with a skew-adjoint generator.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.7081,
  title  = {Root locii for systems defined on Hilbert spaces},
  author = {Birgit Jacob and Kirsten Morris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.7081},
  year   = {2014}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:05:08.408Z