Radially unbounded function

In mathematics, a radially unbounded function is a function

f :

n

for which [1]

Or equivalently,

Such functions are applied in control theory and required in optimization for determination of compact spaces.

Notice that the norm used in the definition can be any norm defined on

, and that the behavior of the function along the axes does not necessarily reveal that it is radially unbounded or not; i.e. to be radially unbounded the condition must be verified along any path that results in:

For example, the functions

{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}f_{1}(x)&=(x_{1}-x_{2})^{2}\\f_{2}(x)&=(x_{1}^{2}+x_{2}^{2})/(1+x_{1}^{2}+x_{2}^{2})+(x_{1}-x_{2})^{2}\end{aligned}}}

are not radially unbounded since along the line

, the condition is not verified even though the second function is globally positive definite.

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