From convergent dynamics to incremental stability

This paper advocates that the convergent systems property and incremental stability are two intimately related though different properties. Sufficient conditions for the convergent systems property usually rely upon first showing that a system is incrementally stable, as e.g. in the celebrated Demidovich condition. However, in the current paper it is shown that incremental stability itself does not imply the convergence property, or vice versa. Moreover, characterizations of both properties in terms of Lyapunov functions are given. Based on these characterizations, it is established that the convergence property implies incremental stability for systems evolving on compact sets, and also when a suitable uniformity condition is satisfied.