%0 Journal Article %D 2014 %T On conjugate times of LQ optimal control problems %A Andrei A. Agrachev %A Luca Rizzi %A Pavel Silveira %K Optimal control, Lagrange Grassmannian, Conjugate point %X Motivated by the study of linear quadratic optimal control problems, we consider a dynamical system with a constant, quadratic Hamiltonian, and we characterize the number of conjugate times in terms of the spectrum of the Hamiltonian vector field $\vec{H}$. We prove the following dichotomy: the number of conjugate times is identically zero or grows to infinity. The latter case occurs if and only if $\vec{H}$ has at least one Jordan block of odd dimension corresponding to a purely imaginary eigenvalue. As a byproduct, we obtain bounds from below on the number of conjugate times contained in an interval in terms of the spectrum of $\vec{H}$. %I Springer %G en %U http://hdl.handle.net/1963/7227 %1 7261 %2 Mathematics %4 1 %# MAT/05 ANALISI MATEMATICA %$ Submitted by Andrei Agrachev (agrachev@sissa.it) on 2013-12-03T08:50:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 1311.2009v1.pdf: 401341 bytes, checksum: 5c32a0e534e70539f1823acdad41ddca (MD5) %R 10.1007/s10883-014-9251-6