A Behavioral Approach To Delay-Differential Systems (Q4337415)

Time-invariant delay-differential systems are being studied by algebraic methods in this paper. Contrary to the customary way of dealing with them as systems over (polynomial) rings, the objects are taken to be behaviors as introduced by \textit{J. C. Willems} [Dynamics reported 2, 171-269 (1989; Zbl 0685.93002)]. Certain questions on uniqueness of polynomial matrices associated with these behaviours are being examined in this paper. To this end, a ring \(\mathcal H\) between \(\mathbb{R}[s,z,z^{-1}]\) and \(\mathbb{R}(s)[z,z^{-1}]\) is presented as the appropriate domain in order to translate relations between behaviors into relations between the associated polynomial matrices and it is shown that the elements of \(\mathcal H\) can be interpreted as a generalized version of delay-differential operators on \(C^\infty(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\). In this framework, a behavior is a kernel of such an operator. The ring \(\mathcal H\) is studied algebraically and turns out to be a Bézout ring as well as an elementary divisor ring, making it possible to bring matrices over \(\mathcal H\) into diagonal form by multiplying with unimodular matrices on both sides. The algebraic results on \(\mathcal H\) are used to show a correspondence between the lattice of behaviors associated with delay-differential equations over the time axis \(\mathbb{R}\) (scalar case) and the lattice of finitely generated ideals in \(\mathcal H\). An analogous version of this correspondence is also given in the case of multivariable delay-differential operators. Finally, the well-known Hautus criterion for spectral controllability is generalized to delay-differential systems, using again the behaviorial approach.