Smooth stabilization implies coprime factorization

It is shown that coprime right factorizations exist for the input-to-state mapping of a continuous-time nonlinear system provided that the smooth feedback stabilization problem is solvable for this system. It follows that feedback linearizable systems admit such fabrications. In order to establish the result, a Lyapunov-theoretic definition is proposed for bounded-input-bounded-output stability. The notion of stability studied in the state-space nonlinear control literature is related to a notion of stability under bounded control perturbations analogous to those studied in operator-theoretic approaches to systems; in particular it is proved that smooth stabilization implies smooth input-to-state stabilization