On some properties of the path spaces for smooth control systems of constant rank (Q1917804)

The author studies the properties of the so-called path space associated with a smooth finitely defined system of constant rank \[ \dot x = f(x) + \sum^m_{i = 1} u^i g_i (x), \quad x \in M,\;x(0) = x_0, \] on a smooth (\(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) of class \(C^\infty\). This space \({\mathcal P}^{(T)}_{x_0,N}\) contains all (admissible) controls \(u (\cdot) \in L^m_2 [0,T]\) such that the trajectories \(x(t) = x(t; x_0, u (\cdot))\), \(0 \leq t \leq T\), corresponding to these controls and to the initial state \(x_0\) of the system under consideration, attain a given (terminal) manifold \(N \subset M\) at time \(t = T\), i.e. \(x(T) \in N\). In this paper, among other results, the main theorem proved is the following: The path space \({\mathcal P}^{(T)}_{x_0,N}\) has the natural structure of a Fredholm manifold, and, moreover, is itself a proper Fredholm submanifold in \(L_2^m [0,T]\). The paper is written in the spirit of optimal control theory.