On Certificates for Almost Sure Reachability in Stochastic Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kordabad, Arash Bahari, Majumdar, Rupak, Motwani, Harshit Jitendra, Soudjani, Sadegh
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Kordabad, Arash Bahari
Majumdar, Rupak
Motwani, Harshit Jitendra
Soudjani, Sadegh
author_facet Kordabad, Arash Bahari
Majumdar, Rupak
Motwani, Harshit Jitendra
Soudjani, Sadegh
contents Almost sure reachability refers to the property of a stochastic system whereby, from any initial condition, the system state reaches a given target set with probability one. In this paper, we study the problem of certifying almost sure reachability in discrete-time stochastic systems using drift and variant conditions. While these conditions are both necessary and sufficient in theory, computational approaches often rely on restricting the search to fixed templates, such as polynomial or quadratic functions. We show that this restriction compromises completeness: there exists a polynomial system for which a given target set is almost surely reachable but admits no polynomial certificate, and a linear system for which a neighborhood of the origin is almost surely reachable but admits no quadratic certificate. We then provide a complete characterization of reachability certificates for linear systems with additive noise. Our analysis yields conditions on the system matrices under which valid certificates exist, and shows how the structure and dimension of the system determine the need for non-quadratic templates. Our results generalize the classical random walk behavior to a broader class of stochastic dynamical systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_20194
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Certificates for Almost Sure Reachability in Stochastic Systems
Kordabad, Arash Bahari
Majumdar, Rupak
Motwani, Harshit Jitendra
Soudjani, Sadegh
Systems and Control
Dynamical Systems
Probability
Almost sure reachability refers to the property of a stochastic system whereby, from any initial condition, the system state reaches a given target set with probability one. In this paper, we study the problem of certifying almost sure reachability in discrete-time stochastic systems using drift and variant conditions. While these conditions are both necessary and sufficient in theory, computational approaches often rely on restricting the search to fixed templates, such as polynomial or quadratic functions. We show that this restriction compromises completeness: there exists a polynomial system for which a given target set is almost surely reachable but admits no polynomial certificate, and a linear system for which a neighborhood of the origin is almost surely reachable but admits no quadratic certificate. We then provide a complete characterization of reachability certificates for linear systems with additive noise. Our analysis yields conditions on the system matrices under which valid certificates exist, and shows how the structure and dimension of the system determine the need for non-quadratic templates. Our results generalize the classical random walk behavior to a broader class of stochastic dynamical systems.
title On Certificates for Almost Sure Reachability in Stochastic Systems
topic Systems and Control
Dynamical Systems
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20194