Riccati inequality and other results for discrete symplectic systems

In this paper we establish several new results regarding the positivity and nonnegativity of discrete quadratic functionals F associated with discrete symplectic systems. In particular, we derive (i) the Riccati inequality for the positivity of F with separated endpoints, (ii) a characterization of the nonnegativity of F for the case of general (jointly varying) endpoints, and (iii) several perturbation-type inequalities regarding the nonnegativity of F with zero endpoints. Some of these results are new even for the special case of discrete Hamiltonian systems. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.