Related papers: Minimum Power to Maintain a Nonequilibrium Distrib…
In the absence of external driving, a system exposed to thermal fluctuations will relax to equilibrium. However, the constant input of work makes it possible to counteract this relaxation, and maintain the system in a nonequilibrium steady…
Controlling the stochastic dynamics of biological populations is a challenge that arises across various biological contexts. However, these dynamics are inherently nonlinear and involve a discrete state space, i.e., the number of molecules,…
Optimal control theory deals with finding protocols to steer a system between assigned initial and final states, such that a trajectory-dependent cost function is minimized. The application of optimal control to stochastic systems is an…
We consider the problem of stochastic optimal control, where the state-feedback control policies take the form of a probability distribution and where a penalty on the entropy is added. By viewing the cost function as a Kullback- Leibler…
At present, the problem to steer a non-Markovian process with minimum energy between specified end-point marginal distributions remains unsolved. Herein, we consider the special case for a non-Markovian process y(t) which, however, assumes…
The considered optimal control problem of a stochastic power system, is to select the set of power supply vectors which infimizes the probability that the phase-angle differences of any power flow of the network, endangers the transient…
Arguing about the equilibrium distribution of continuous-time Markov chains can be vital for showing properties about the underlying systems. For example in biological systems, bistability of a chemical reaction network can hint at its…
We show that the Schnakenberg's entropy production rate in a master equation is lower bounded by a function of the weight of the Markov graph, here defined as the sum of the absolute values of probability currents over the edges. The result…
The linear response of a dynamical system refers to changes to properties of the system when small external perturbations are applied. We consider the little-studied question of selecting an optimal perturbation so as to (i) maximise the…
The controllability of complex networks has received much attention recently, which tells whether we can steer a system from an initial state to any final state within finite time with admissible external inputs. In order to accomplish the…
This paper presents approaches to mean-field control, motivated by distributed control of multi-agent systems. Control solutions are based on a convex optimization problem, whose domain is a convex set of probability mass functions (pmfs).…
We consider a finite-state, continuous-time Markov process, represented in the "linear framework" by a directed graph with labelled edges which specifies the infinitesimal generator of the process. If the graph is strongly connected, the…
Kullback-Leibler (KL) control enables efficient numerical methods for nonlinear optimal control problems. The crucial assumption of KL control is the full controllability of the transition distribution. However, this assumption is often…
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…
We give the solution to the minimum-energy control problem for linear stochastic systems. The problem is as follows: given an exactly controllable system, find the control process with the minimum expected energy that transfers the system…
We consider a risk-sensitive optimization of consumption-utility on infinite time horizon where the one-period investment gain depends on an underlying economic state whose evolution over time is assumed to be described by a discrete-time,…
The ability to manipulate and control fluid flows is of great importance in many scientific and engineering applications. Here, a cluster-based control framework is proposed to determine optimal control laws with respect to a cost function…
This paper considers an online (real-time) control problem that involves an agent performing a discrete-time random walk over a finite state space. The agent's action at each time step is to specify the probability distribution for the next…
This paper first describes a class of uncertain stochastic control systems with Markovian switching, and derives an It\^o-Liu formula for Markov-modulated processes. And we characterize an optimal control law, which satisfies the…
We consider the problem to steer a linear dynamical system with full state observation from an initial gaussian distribution in state-space to a final one with minimum energy control. The system is stochastically driven through the control…