Lyapunov Stability
Various types of stability may be discussed for the solutions of differential equations describing dynamical systems. The most important type is that concerning the stability of solutions near to a point of equilibrium. This may be discussed by the theory of Lyapunov. In simple terms, if all solutions of the dynamical system that start out near an equilibrium point stay near forever, then is Lyapunov stable. More strongly, if is Lyapunov stable and all solutions that start out near converge to, then is asymptotically stable. The notion of exponential stability guarantees a minimal rate of decay, i.e., an estimate of how quickly the solutions converge. The idea of Lyapunov stability can be extended to infinite-dimensional manifolds, where it is known as structural stability, which concerns the behavior of different but "nearby" solutions to differential equations. Input-to-state stability (ISS) applies Lyapunov notions to systems with inputs.
Read more about Lyapunov Stability: History, Definition For Continuous-time Systems, Definition For Discrete-time Systems, Stability For Linear State Space Models, Stability For Systems With Inputs, Example, Barbalat's Lemma and Stability of Time-varying Systems
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