Linear dynamical systems on graphs

Abstract: We consider linear dynamical systems with a structure of a multigraph. The vertices are associated to linear spaces and the edges correspond to linear maps between those spaces. We analyse the asymptotic growth of trajectories (associated to paths along the multigraph), the stability and the stabilizability problems. This generalizes the classical linear switching systems and their recent extensions to Markovian systems, to systems generated by regular languages, etc. We show that an arbitrary system can be factorized into several irreducible systems on strongly connected multigraphs. For the latter systems, we prove the existence of invariant (Barabanov) multinorm and derive a method of its construction. The method works for a vast majority of systems and finds the joint spectral radius (Lyapunov exponent). Numerical examples are presented and applications to the study of fractals, attractors, and multistep methods for ODEs are discussed.