  For many years it was believed that an unstable periodic orbit with an odd
number of real Floquet multipliers greater than unity cannot be stabilized by
the time-delayed feedback control mechanism of Pyragus. A recent paper by
Fiedler et al uses the normal form of a subcritical Hopf bifurcation to give a
counterexample to this theorem. Using the Lorenz equations as an example, we
demonstrate that the stabilization mechanism identified by Fiedler et al for
the Hopf normal form can also apply to unstable periodic orbits created by
subcritical Hopf bifurcations in higher-dimensional dynamical systems. Our
analysis focuses on a particular codimension-two bifurcation that captures the
stabilization mechanism in the Hopf normal form example, and we show that the
same codimension-two bifurcation is present in the Lorenz equations with
appropriately chosen Pyragus-type time-delayed feedback. This example suggests
a possible strategy for choosing the feedback gain matrix in Pyragus control of
unstable periodic orbits that arise from a subcritical Hopf bifurcation of a
stable equilibrium. In particular, our choice of feedback gain matrix is
informed by the Fiedler et al example, and it works over a broad range of
parameters, despite the fact that a center-manifold reduction of the
higher-dimensional problem does not lead to their model problem.
