Papers by M. Arcak and E.D. Sontag

This paper gives conditions that guarantee spatial uniformity of the solutions of reaction-diffusion partial differential equations, stated in terms of the Jacobian matrix and Neumann eigenvalues of elliptic operators on the given spatial domain, and similar conditions for diffusively-coupled networks of ordinary differential equations. Also derived are numerical tests making use of linear matrix inequalities that are useful in certifying these conditions.

We present conditions that guarantee spatial uniformity in diffusively-coupled systems. Diffusive coupling is a ubiquitous form of local interaction, arising in diverse areas including multiagent coordination and pattern formation in biochemical networks. The conditions we derive make use of the Jacobian matrix and Neumann eigenvalues of elliptic operators, and generalize and unify existing theory about asymptotic convergence of trajectories of reaction-diffusion partial differential equations as well as compartmental ordinary differential equations. We present numerical tests making use of linear matrix inequalities that may be used to certify these conditions. We discuss an example pertaining to electromechanical oscillators. The paper's main contributions are unified verifiable relaxed conditions that guarantee synchrony.

This paper deals with the stability of interconnections of nonlinear stochastic systems, using concepts of passivity and noise-to-state stability.

Conference version of ``Stability certification of large scale stochastic systems using dissipativity of subsystems''.

This paper provides synchronization conditions for networks of nonlinear systems, where each component of the network itself consists of subsystems represented as operators in the extended L2 space. The synchronization conditions are provided by combining the input-output properties of the subsystems with information about the structure of network. The paper also explores results for state-space models as well as biochemical applications. The work is motivated by cellular networks where signaling occurs both internally, through interactions of species, and externally, through intercellular signaling.

See abstract and link to pdf in entry for Journal paper.

See abstract and link to pdf in entry for Journal paper.

In this expository paper, we provide a streamlined version of the key lemma on stability of interconnections due to Vidyasagar and Moylan and Hill, and then show how it its hypotheses may be verified for network structures of great interest in biology.

This paper presents a stability test for a class of interconnected nonlinear systems motivated by biochemical reaction networks. One of the main results determines global asymptotic stability of the network from the diagonal stability of a "dissipativity matrix" which incorporates information about the passivity properties of the subsystems, the interconnection structure of the network, and the signs of the interconnection terms. This stability test encompasses the "secant criterion" for cyclic networks presented in our previous paper, and extends it to a general interconnection structure represented by a graph. A second main result allows one to accommodate state products. This extension makes the new stability criterion applicable to a broader class of models, even in the case of cyclic systems. The new stability test is illustrated on a mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade model, and on a branched interconnection structure motivated by metabolic networks. Finally, another result addresses the robustness of stability in the presence of diffusion terms in a compartmental system made out of identical systems.

A class of distributed systems with a cyclic interconnection structure is considered. These systems arise in several biochemical applications and they can undergo diffusion driven instability which leads to a formation of spatially heterogeneous patterns. In this paper, a class of cyclic systems in which addition of diffusion does not have a destabilizing effect is identified. For these systems global stability results hold if the "secant" criterion is satisfied. In the linear case, it is shown that the secant condition is necessary and sufficient for the existence of a decoupled quadratic Lyapunov function, which extends a recent diagonal stability result to partial differential equations. For reaction-diffusion equations with nondecreasing coupling nonlinearities global asymptotic stability of the origin is established. All of the derived results remain true for both linear and nonlinear positive diffusion terms. Similar results are shown for compartmental systems.

For distributed systems with a cyclic interconnection structure, a global stability result is shown to hold if the secant criterion is satisfied.

This paper considers a class of systems with a cyclic structure that arises, among other examples, in dynamic models for certain biochemical reactions. We first show that a criterion for local stability, derived earlier in the literature, is in fact a necessary and sufficient condition for diagonal stability of the corresponding class of matrices. We then revisit a recent generalization of this criterion to output strictly passive systems, and recover the same stability condition using our diagonal stability result as a tool for constructing a Lyapunov function. Using this procedure for Lyapunov construction we exhibit classes of cyclic systems with sector nonlinearities and characterize their global stability properties.

This paper studies a feedback regulation problem that arises in at least two different biological applications. The feedback regulation problem under consideration may be interpreted as an adaptive control problem for tuning bifurcation parameters, and it has not been studied in the control literature. The goal of the paper is to formulate this problem and to present some preliminary results.

We analyze nonlinear cascades in which the driven subsystem is integral ISS, and characterize the admissible integral ISS gains for stability. This characterization makes use of the convergence speed of the driving subsystem, and allows a larger class of gain functions when the convergence is faster. We show that our integral ISS gain characterization unifies different approaches in the literature which restrict the nonlinear growth of the driven subsystem and the convergence speed of the driving subsystem.