Supermodal Decomposition of the Linear Swing Equation for Multilayer Networks

Notes on resonant and synchronized states in complex networks

Synchronization and resonance on networks are some of the most remarkable collective dynamical phenomena. The network topology, or the nature and distribution of the connections within an ensemble of coupled oscillators, plays a crucial role in shaping the local and global evolution of the two phenomena. This article further explores this relationship within a compact mathematical framework and provides new contributions on certain pivotal issues, including a closed bound for the average synchronization time in arbitrary topologies; new evidences of the effect of the coupling strength on this time; exact closed expressions for the resonance frequencies in terms of the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix; a measure of the effectiveness of an influencer node's impact on the network; and, finally, a discussion on the existence of a resonant synchronized state. Some properties of the solution of the linear swing equation are also discussed within the same setting. Numerical experiments conducted on two distinct real networks-a social network and a power grid-illustrate the significance of these results and shed light on intriguing aspects of how these processes can be interpreted within networks of this kind.

Exact Decomposition of Optimal Control Problems via Simultaneous Block Diagonalization of Matrices

In this paper, we consider optimal control problems (OCPs) applied to large-scale linear dynamical systems with a large number of states and inputs. We attempt to reduce such problems into a set of independent OCPs of lower dimensions. Our decomposition is 'exact' in the sense that it preserves all the information about the original system and the objective function. Previous work in this area has focused on strategies that exploit symmetries of the underlying system and of the objective function. Here, instead, we implement the algebraic method of simultaneous block diagonalization of matrices (SBD), which we show provides advantages both in terms of the dimension of the subproblems that are obtained and of the computation time. We provide practical examples with networked systems that demonstrate the benefits of applying the SBD decomposition over the decomposition method based on group symmetries.