Funnel Control for Langevin Dynamics

Abstract: We study tracking control for stochastic differential equations of Langevin type and describe a new conceptual approach to the sampling problem for those systems. The objective is to guarantee the evolution of the mean value in a prescribed performance funnel around a given sufficiently smooth reference signal. To achieve this objective we design a novel funnel controller and show its feasibility under certain structural conditions on the potential energy. The control design does not require any specific knowledge of the shape of the potential energy. We illustrate the results by a numerical simulation for a double-well potential.