Dirac structures and boundary control systems associated with skew-symmetric differential operators

Associated with a skew-symmetric linear operator on the spatial domain $[a,b]$ we define a Dirac structure which includes the port variables on the boundary of this spatial domain. This Dirac structure is a subspace of a Hilbert space. Naturally, associated with this Dirac structure is an infinite-dimensional system. We parameterize the boundary port variables for which the $C_{0}$-semigroup associated with this system is contractive or unitary. Furthermore, this parameterization is used to split the boundary port variables into inputs and outputs. Similarly, we define a linear port controlled Hamiltonian system associated with the previously defined Dirac structure and a symmetric positive operator defining the energy of the system. We illustrate this theory on the example of the Timoshenko beam.