Lyapunov coupled equations for continuous-time infinite Markov jump linear systems

This paper deals with Lyapunov equations for continuous-time Markov jump linear systems (MJLS). Out of the bent which wends most of the literature on MJLS, we focus here on the case in which the Markov chain has a countably infinite state space. It is shown that the infinite MJLS is stochastically stabilizable (SS) if and only if the associated countably infinite coupled Lyapunov equations have a unique norm bounded strictly positive solution. It is worth mentioning here that this result do not hold for mean square stabilizability (MSS), since SS and MSS are no longer equivalent in our set up (see, e.g., [J. Baczynski, Optimal control for continuous time LQ-problems with infinite Markov jump parameters, Ph.D. Thesis, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ/COPPE, 2000]). To some extent, a decomplexification technique and tools from operator theory in Banach space and, in particular, from semigroup theory are the very technical underpinning of the paper.  2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.