PHASE-SPACE TRANSPORT AND CONTROL OF ESCAPE FROM A POTENTIAL WELL

A framework for controlling a nonlinear dynamical system against escap e from a potential well is presented based on reducing the phase space transport across the separatrix associated with the potential well. A bandlimited open-loop control with finite lag is considered for syste ms with weak additive stationary forcing including, specifically, the colored Gaussian case. The related multiplicative, closed-loop control problem is shown to reduce to an open-loop problem. A numerical examp le based on the Duffing oscillator is presented to illustrate the theo ry.