Singular extremals on Lie groups

We investigate the space of singular curves associated to a distribution ofk-planes, or, what is the same thing, a nonlinear deterministic control system linear in controls. A singular curve is one for which the associated linearized system is not controllable. If a quadratic positive-definite cost function is introduced, then the corresponding optimal control problem is known as the sub-Riemannian geodesic problem. The original motivation for our work was the question “Are all sub-Riemannian minimizers smooth?” which is equivalent to the question “Are singular minimizers necessarily smooth?” Our main result concerns the singular curves for a class of homogeneous systems whose state spaces are compact Lie groups. We prove that for this class each singular curve lies in a lower-dimensional subgroup within which it is regular and we use this result to prove that all sub-Riemannian minimizers are smooth. A central ingredient of our proof is a symplectic-geometric characterization of singular curves formulated by Hsu. We extend this characterization to nonsmooth singular curves. We find that the symplectic point of view clarifies the situation and simplifies calculations.