Related papers: Minimal dissipation in processes far from equilibr…
Many applications -- including power systems, robotics, and economics -- involve a dynamical system interacting with a stochastic and hard-to-model environment. We adopt a reinforcement learning approach to control such systems.…
The question of how systems respond to perturbations is ubiquitous in physics. Predicting this response for large classes of systems becomes particularly challenging if many degrees of freedom are involved and linear response theory cannot…
Irreversible processes accomplished in a fixed time involve nonlinearly coupled flows of matter, energy, and information. Here, using entropy production as an example, we show how thermodynamic uncertainty relations and speed limits on…
We propose an optimization strategy to control the dynamics of a stochastic system transferred from one thermal equilibrium to another and apply it experimentally to a Brownian particle in an optical trap under compression. Based on a…
Nonadiabatic unitary evolution with tailored time-dependent Hamiltonians can prepare systems of cold atomic gases with various desired properties. For a system of two one-dimensional quasicondensates coupled with a time-varying tunneling…
We consider an optimal control problem with tracking-type cost functional constrained by the Cattaneo equation, which is a well-known model for delayed heat transfer. In particular, we are interested the asymptotic behaviour of the optimal…
This paper presents a convex reformulation of a nonlinear constrained optimization problem for Markov decision processes, and applies the technical findings to optimal control problems for an ensemble of thermostatically controlled loads…
Recent work [Ran22] formulated a class of optimal control problems involving positive linear systems, linear stage costs, and elementwise constraints on control. It was shown that the problem admits linear optimal cost and the associated…
The first-order optimality conditions for a generic nonlinear optimization problem are generated as part of the terminal transversality conditions of an optimal control problem. It is shown that the Lagrangian of the optimization problem is…
Finite-dimensional dissipative dynamical systems with multiple time-scales are obtained when modeling chemical reaction kinetics with ordinary differential equations. Such stiff systems are computationally hard to solve and therefore,…
This paper introduces a novel approach to the optimal control of linear discrete-time systems subject to bounded disturbances. Our approach is based on the newly established duality between ellipsoidal approximations of reachable and hardly…
We consider the actuator placement problem for linear systems. Specifically, we aim to identify an actuator which requires the least amount of control energy to drive the system from an arbitrary initial condition to the origin in the worst…
The study of thermal heat engines was pivotal to establishing the principles of equilibrium thermodynamics, with implications far wider than only engine optimization. For nonequilibrium systems, which by definition dissipate energy even at…
In this paper, we design a controller for an interconnected system where a linear Stochastic Differential Equation (SDE) is actuated through a linear parabolic heat equation. These dynamics arise in various applications, such as coupled…
The maximality principle has been a valuable tool in identifying the free-boundary functions that are associated with the solutions to several optimal stopping problems involving one-dimensional time-homogeneous diffusions and their running…
We consider damped stochastic systems in a controlled (time-varying) quadratic potential and study their transition between specified Gibbs-equilibria states in finite time. By the second law of thermodynamics, the minimum amount of work…
Accelerating controlled thermodynamic processes requires an auxiliary Hamiltonian to steer the system into instantaneous equilibrium states. An extra energy cost is inevitably needed in such finite-time operation. We recently develop a…
Conditions are established under which the optimal control of processes having both absolutely continuous and singular (with respect to time) controls are equivalent to linear programs over a space of measures on the state and control…
We establish universal relations between pattern formation and dissipation with a geometric approach to nonequilibrium thermodynamics of deterministic reaction-diffusion systems. We first provide a way to systematically decompose the…
We consider the optimal control problem of minimizing some quadratic functional over all possible solutions of an internally controlled multi-dimensional heat equation with a periodic terminal state constraint. This problem has a unique…