The accessibility set of a positive cone for autonomous nonnegative linear systems (Q1375020)

Let \( b\in R^m\) and let \( A \) be a quadratic \(m\times m\)-matrix of nonnegative elements. A necessary and sufficient condition is obtained for the existence of a nonnegative integer number \(N\) such that \(A^{N+t}b\in R^m_+\) for an arbitrary nonnegative integer \(t\). The condition is formulated in terms of the left and right eigenvectors and eigenvalues of \(A\) and, therefore, is invariant with respect to the selection of the basis. The author refers to the controllability of discrete linear control systems as the motivation for this work.