Target control of complex networks: How to save control energy

Controlling complex networks has received much attention in the past two decades. In order to control complex networks in practice, recent progress is mainly focused on the control energy required to drive the associated system from an initial state to any final state within finite time. However, one of the major challenges when controlling complex networks is that the amount of control energy is usually prohibitively expensive. Previous explorations on reducing the control energy often rely on adding more driver nodes to be controlled directly by external control inputs, or reducing the number of target nodes required to be controlled. Here we show that the required control energy can be reduced exponentially by appropriately setting the initial states of uncontrollable nodes for achieving the target control of complex networks. We further present the energy-optimal initial states and theoretically prove their existence for any structure of network. Moreover, we demonstrate that the control energy could be saved by reducing the distance between the energy-optimal states set and the initial states of uncontrollable nodes. Finally, we propose a strategy to determine the optimal time to inject the control inputs, which may reduce the control energy exponentially. Our conclusions are all verified numerically, and shed light on saving control energy in practical control.