Existence and uniform boundedness of optimal solutions of variational problems (Q5926231)

Summary: Given an \(x_0\in \mathbb{R}^n\) we study the infinite horizon problem of minimizing the expression \(\int^T_0 f(t, x(t), x'(t)) dt\) as \(T\) grows to infinity where \(x: [0,\infty)\to \mathbb{R}^n\) satisfies the initial condition \(x(0)= x_0\). We analyze the existence and the properties of approximate solutions for every prescribed initial value \(x_0\). We also establish that for every bounded set \(E\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) the \(C([0, T])\) norms of approximate solutions \(x: [0,T]\to \mathbb{R}^n\) for the minimization problem on an interval \([0, T]\) with \(x(0),x(T)\in E\) are bounded by some constant which does not depend on \(T\).