A dissipativity theorem for p-dominant systems

Abstract: We revisit the classical dissipativity theorem of linear-quadratic theory in a generalized framework where the quadratic storage is negative definite in a p-dimensional subspace and positive definite in a complementary subspace. The classical theory assumes p = 0 and provides an inter- connection theory for stability analysis, i.e. convergence to a zero dimensional attractor. The generalized theory is shown to provide an interconnection theory for p-dominance analysis, i.e. convergence to a p-dimensional dominant subspace. In turn, this property is the differential characterization of a generalized contraction property for nonlinear systems. The proposed generalization opens a novel avenue for the analysis of interconnected systems with low-dimensional attractors.