𝔖 Bobbio Scriptorium
✦   LIBER   ✦

Stability of matrices with sufficiently strong negative-dominant-diagonal submatrices

✍ Scribed by Herman J. Nieuwenhuis; Lambert Schoonbeek


Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
1997
Tongue
English
Weight
908 KB
Volume
258
Category
Article
ISSN
0024-3795

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis


A well-known sufficient condition for stability of a system of linear first-order differential equations is that the matrix of the homogeneous dynamics has a negative dominant diagonal. However, this condition cannot be applied to systems of secondorder differential equations. In this paper we introduce the concept of a (negative) dominant diagonal with a given strength factor. Using this, we present stability theorems which show that second-order systems are stable if the matrix of the homogeneous dynamics has submatrices with a sufficiently strong negative dominant diagonal. © Elsevier Science Inc., 1997 l. INTRODUCTION Consider the homogeneous system of linear first-order differential equations y = By, where y = (Yi) represents an n × 1 vector of variables and its time derivative, and where B =-(bij) is a real matrix of dimensions n × n.

As is well known, this system is asymptotically stable if and only if all eigenvalues of the matrix B have negative real parts. Asymptotic stability of the system means that any solution converges towards the equilibrium, i.e. the n × 1 vector of which all elements are equal to zero. We call a square matrix stable if all its eigenvalues have negative real parts. For a general reference, see e.g. [8], [9], [10], or [13].