arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Mario Sigalotti.
We study branching of regular abnormal geodesics in sub-Riemannian manifolds of rank two. As an application, we provide examples of two new phenomena: continuous families of strictly abnormal branching geodesics, and geodesics with an accumulation of countably many branching points.
Photonic linear optical networks provide a versatile platform for quantum information processing and quantum state engineering. However, the set of states that can be generated using passive linear optics alone is fundamentally constrained by bosonic symmetries. Heralding, based on conditional measurements on auxiliary modes, is a widely used technique to overcome these limitations and effectively enlarge the set of accessible states. Despite the widespread use of heralding, it is often unclear how specific ancillary resources impact the overall reachability of the target space. In this work, we investigate the local controllability of photonic states in linear optical networks by analyzing the rank of the Jacobian of the output state with respect to the underlying unitary circuit, which provides a quantitative measure of the dimension of the accessible tangent space at a given configuration. Our analysis ranges from passive linear optics to heralded linear optics, where auxiliary resources and conditional measurements are included. Within this framework, we quantify how different resources enlarge the locally accessible state space beyond that of passive linear optics and determine the resources required for the Jacobian rank to reach its maximal value, thereby achieving full local controllability. As maximal local rank is a necessary condition for global reachability, our framework offers a systematic tool to assess and compare the accessible state space of measurement-based photonic architectures, and to establish practical criteria for the resources needed in high-dimensional quantum state engineering.
Temporal Interference Stimulation (TIS) is a non-invasive neuromodulation technique in which two high-frequency sinusoidal currents with slightly different frequencies generate a low-frequency envelope that can activate deep neural structures. This study investigates the conditions under which TIS elicits action potentials in a single neuron modeled by the FitzHugh-Nagumo system. This research integrates phase-plane analysis and geometric singular perturbation to develop a mathematical framework for analyzing TIS. By combining a mathematical analysis of differential equations with computer simulations, the study elucidates how the amplitudes and beat frequency jointly determine whether the neuron remains quiescent, exhibits only transient responses, or undergoes persistent (tonic) firing.
We study the approximate controllability problem for Liouville transport equations along a mechanical Hamiltonian vector field. Such PDEs evolve inside the orbit $$\mathcal{O}(\rho_0):=\left\{\rho_0\circ \Phi\mid \Phi\in {\rm DHam}(T^*M)\right\},\quad \rho_0\in L^r(T^*M,\mathbb{R}), \quad r\in[1,\infty),$$ where $\rho_0$ is the initial density and ${\rm DHam}(T^*M)$ is the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of the cotangent bundle manifold $T^*M$. The approximately reachable densities from $\rho_0$ are thus contained in $\overline{\mathcal{O}(\rho_0)}$, where the closure is taken with respect to the $L^r$-topology. Our first result is a characterization of $\overline{\mathcal{O}(\rho_0)}$ when the manifold $M$ is the Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^d$ or the torus $\mathbb{T}^d$ of arbitrary dimension: $\overline{\mathcal{O}(\rho_0)}$ is the set of all the densities whose sub- and super-level sets have the same measure as those of $\rho_0$. This result is an approximate version, in the case of ${\rm DHam}(T^*M)$, of a theorem by J. Moser (Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 120: 286-294, 1965) on the group of diffeomorphisms. We then present two examples of systems, respectively on $M=\mathbb{R}^d$ and $\mathbb{T}^d$, where the small-time approximately attainable diffeomorphisms coincide with ${\rm DHam}(T^*M)$, respectively at the level of the group and at the level of the densities. The proofs are based on the construction of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms that approximate suitable permutations of finite grids, and Poisson bracket techniques.
In recent years, several notions of non-rigidity of horizontal vectors in Carnot groups have been proposed, motivated, in particular, by the characterization of monotone sets and Whitney extension properties. In this note we compare some of these notions.
This paper addresses a class of impulsive systems defined by a mix of continuous-time and discrete-time switched linear dynamics. We first analyze a related class of weighted discrete-time switched systems for which we establish a Berger--Wang-type result. An analogous result is then derived for impulsive systems and subsequently used to characterize their exponential stability through a spectral approach, thereby extending existing results in switched-systems theory.
We study a class of singularly perturbed impulsive linear switched systems exhibiting switching between slow and fast dynamics. To analyze their behavior, we construct auxiliary switched systems evolving in a single time scale. We prove that the stability or instability of these auxiliary systems directly determines that of the original system in the regime of small singular perturbation parameters.
We provide a sufficient condition for the controllability of a bilinear closed quantum system steered by a static field and a time-varying field, based on the notion of weakly conically connected spectrum. More precisely, we show that if a controlled Hamiltonian with two inputs has a weakly conically connected spectrum, then, freezing one of the two inputs at almost every constant value, the obtained single-input system is controllable. The result is illustrated with two examples, enantio-selective excitation in a chiral molecule and the driven Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian.
A longstanding open question in sub-Riemannian geometry is the following: are sub-Riemannian length minimizers smooth? We give a negative answer to this question, exhibiting an example of a $C^2$ but not $C^3$ length-minimizer of a real-analytic (even polynomial) sub-Riemannian structure.
In this paper we discuss how a general bilinear finite-dimensional closed quantum system with dispersed parameters can be steered between eigenstates. We show that, under suitable conditions on the separation of spectral gaps and the boundedness of parameter dispersion, rotating wave and adiabatic approximations can be employed in cascade to achieve population inversion between arbitrary eigenstates. We propose an explicit control law and test numerically the sharpness of the conditions on several examples.
In this paper we discuss the notion of universality for classes of candidate common Lyapunov functions of linear switched systems. On the one hand, we prove that a family of absolutely homogeneous functions is universal as soon as it approximates arbitrarily well every convex absolutely homogeneous function for the $C^0$ topology of the unit sphere. On the other hand, we prove several obstructions for a class to be universal, showing, in particular, that families of piecewise-polynomial continuous functions whose construction involves at most $l$ polynomials of degree at most $m$ (for given positive integers $l,m$) cannot be universal.
In this article, we establish exponential contraction results for the diameter and variance of general first-order multiagent systems. Our approach is based on compactification techniques, and works under rather mild assumptions. Namely, we posit that either the scrambling coefficient, or the algebraic connectivity of the averaged interaction graphs of the system over all time windows of a given length are uniformly positive.
This paper deals with the controllability of linear one-dimensional hyperbolic systems. Reformulating the problem in terms of linear difference equations and making use of infinite-dimensional realization theory, we obtain both necessary and sufficient conditions for approximate and exact controllability, expressed in the frequency domain. The results are applied to flows in networks.
In this paper we investigate when linearly independent eigenfunctions of the Schr\''odinger operator may have the same modulus. General properties are established and the one-dimensional case is treated in full generality. The study is motivated by its application to the bilinear control of the Schr{\"o}dinger equation. By assuming that the potentials of interaction satisfy a saturation property and by adapting a strategy recently proposed by Duca and Nersesyan, we discuss when the system can be steered arbitrarily fast between energy levels. Extensions of the previous results to quantum graphs are finally presented.
Achiral molecules can be made temporarily chiral by excitation with electric fields, in the sense that an average over molecular orientations displays a net chiral signal [Tikhonov et al., Sci. Adv. 8, eade0311 (2022)]. Here, we go beyond the assumption of molecular orientations to remain fixed during the excitation process. Treating both rotations and vibrations quantum mechanically, we identify conditions for the creation of chiral vibrational wavepackets -- with net chiral signals -- in ensembles of achiral molecules which are initially randomly oriented. Based on the analysis of symmetry and controllability, we derive excitation schemes for the creation of chiral wavepackets using a combination of (a) microwave and IR pulses and (b) a static field and a sequence of IR pulses. These protocols leverage quantum rotational dynamics for pump-probe spectroscopy of chiral vibrational dynamics, extending the latter to regions of the electromagnetic spectrum other than the UV.
In this article, we investigate the asymptotic formation of consensus for several classes of time-dependent cooperative graphon dynamics. After motivating the use of this type of macroscopic models to describe multi-agent systems, we adapt the classical notion of scrambling coefficient to this setting, leverage it to establish sufficient conditions ensuring the exponential convergence to consensus with respect to the $L^{\infty}$-norm topology. We then shift our attention to consensus formation expressed in terms of the $L^2$-norm, and prove three different consensus result for symmetric, balanced and strongly connected topologies, which involve a suitable generalisation of the notion of algebraic connectivity to this infinite-dimensional framework. We then show that, just as in the finite-dimensional setting, the notion of algebraic connectivity that we propose encodes information about the connectivity properties of the underlying interaction topology. We finally use the corresponding results to shed some light on the relation between $L^2$- and $L^{\infty}$-consensus formation, and illustrate our contributions by a series of numerical simulations.
Consider a non-autonomous continuous-time linear system in which the time-dependent matrix determining the dynamics is piecewise constant and takes finitely many values $A_1, \dotsc, A_N$. This paper studies the equality cases between the maximal Lyapunov exponent associated with the set of matrices $\{A_1, \dotsc, A_N\}$, on the one hand, and the corresponding ones for piecewise deterministic Markov processes with modes $A_1, \dotsc, A_N$, on the other hand. A fundamental step in this study consists in establishing a result of independent interest, namely, that any sequence of Markov processes associated with the matrices $A_1,\dotsc, A_N$ converges, up to extracting a subsequence, to a Markov process associated with a suitable convex combination of those matrices.
The paper deals with the controllability of finite-dimensional linear difference delay equations, i.e., dynamics for which the state at a given time $t$ is obtained as a linear combination of the control evaluated at time $t$ and of the state evaluated at finitely many previous instants of time $t-\Lambda_1,\dots,t-\Lambda_N$. Based on the realization theory developed by Y.Yamamoto for general infinite-dimensional dynamical systems, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions, expressed in the frequency domain, for the approximate controllability in finite time in $L^q$ spaces, $q \in [1, +\infty)$. We also provide a necessary condition for $L^1$ exact controllability, which can be seen as the closure of the $L^1$ approximate controllability criterion. Furthermore, we provide an explicit upper bound on the minimal times of approximate and exact controllability, given by $d\max\{\Lambda_1,\dots,\Lambda_N\}$, where $d$ is the dimension of the state space.