Controllability near a homoclinic bifurcation

Abstract

Controllability properties are studied for control-affine systems depending on a parameter α and with constrained control values. The uncontrolled systems in dimension two and three are subject to a homoclinic bifurcation. This generates two families of control sets depending on a parameter in the involved vector fields and the size of the control range. A new parameter β given by a split function for the homoclinic bifurcation determines the behavior of these control sets. It is also shown that there are parameter regions where the uncontrolled equation has no periodic orbits, while the controlled systems have periodic solutions arbitrarily close to the homoclinic orbit.