The role of nonreal eigenvalues in the identification of cycles in a compartmental system (Q762088)

The paper concerns the relationship between the cycles in the graph of a compartmental system and the modes of the impulse response function associated with an input-output experiment. Suppose that there is at least one oscillatory mode, \(e^{\mu t}\cos (\nu t\)-\(\alpha)\). Let \(e^{\rho t}\) be the slowest mode. The main result is that the system contains a cycle of length 3 or longer and that the length of the longest cycle is at least \(\pi /\tan^{-1}[| \nu | /(\rho-\mu)]\). The paper also deals with the problem of estimating the cycle length from discrete data.