Existence and uniqueness for a class of multi-term fractional differential equations

In this paper, we consider the initial value problem for the nonlinear fractional differential equations

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} D^\alpha u(t)=f(t,u(t),D^{\beta _1}u(t),\ldots ,D^{\beta _N}u(t)), \quad &{}t\in (0,1],\\ D^{\alpha -k}u(0)=0, \quad &{}k=1,2,\ldots ,n, \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\alpha >\beta _1>\beta _2>\cdots \beta _N>0\), \(n=[\alpha ]+1\) for \(\alpha \notin \mathbb {N}\) and \(\alpha =n\) for \(\alpha \in \mathbb {N}\), \(\beta _j<1\) for any \(j\in \{1,2,\ldots ,N\}\), D is the standard Riemann–Liouville derivative and \(f:[0,1]\times \mathbb {R}^{N+1}\rightarrow \mathbb {R}\) is a given function. By means of Schauder fixed point theorem and Banach contraction principle, an existence result and a unique result for the solution are obtained,respectively. As an application, some examples are presented to illustrate the main results.

     

Positive solutions for singular Hadamard fractional differential system with four-point coupled boundary conditions

In this paper, we investigate the four-point coupled boundary value problem of nonlinear semipositone Hadamard fractional differential equations

$$\begin{aligned} D^\alpha u(t)\,+\,\lambda f(t,u(t),v(t))\!=\!0, \quad D^\beta v(t)\,+\,\lambda g(t,u(t),v(t))\!=\!0, \quad t\!\in \!(1,e),\quad \!\!\lambda \!>\!0,\\ u^{(j)}(1)\!=\!v^{(j)}(1)\!=\!0,\quad 0\!\le \! j\le n-2, \quad u(e)\!=\!av(\xi ),\quad v(e)\!=\!bu(\eta ), \quad \xi ,\eta \in (1,e), \end{aligned}$$

where \(\lambda ,a,b\) are three parameters with \(0<ab(\log \eta )^{\alpha -1}(\log \xi )^{\beta -1}<1\), \(\alpha ,\beta \in (n-1,n]\) are two real numbers and \(n\ge 3\), \(D^\alpha , D^\beta \) are the Hadamard fractional derivative of fractional order, and \(f,g\) are continuous and may be singular at \(t=0\) and \(t=1\). We firstly give the corresponding Green’s function for the boundary value problem and some of its properties. Moreover, by applying Guo-Krasnoselskii fixed point theorems, we derive an interval of \(\lambda \) such that any \(\lambda \) lying in this interval, the singular boundary value problem has at least one positive solution. As applications, two interesting examples are presented to illustrate the main results.

     

Existence Result for a Superlinear Fractional Navier Boundary Value Problems

In this paper, we study the following fractional Navier boundary value problem

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{lllc} D^{\beta }(D^{\alpha }u)(x)=u(x)g(u(x)),\quad x\in (0,1), \\ \displaystyle \lim _{x\longrightarrow 0}x^{1-\beta }D^{\alpha }u(x)=-a,\quad \,\,u(1)=b, \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\alpha ,\beta \in (0,1]\) such that \(\alpha +\beta >1\), \(D^{\beta }\) and \(D^{\alpha }\) stand for the standard Riemann–Liouville fractional derivatives and a, b are nonnegative constants such that \(a+b>0\). The function g is a nonnegative continuous function in \([0,\infty )\) that is required to satisfy some suitable integrability condition. Using estimates on the Green’s function and a perturbation argument, we prove the existence of a unique positive continuous solution, which behaves like the unique solution of the homogeneous problem.

     

A global existence and uniqueness result for a class of hyperbolic operators

In this paper a global existence and uniqueness theorem for the Cauchy problem related to the class of hyperbolic operators with double characteristics \(P=D^2_{t} - D^2_{x_1} - (t+ \lambda - \alpha (x_1))^2 D^2_{x_2},\) depending on the parameter \(\lambda \) in the half-space \(\Omega = \mathbb {R}^2 \times ]0, + \infty [\) is proved. In the first part of the paper, a priori estimates in Sobolev spaces \(W^{r,2}\), with \(r\) negative, have been established. Then, the regularity is studied by using these spaces and by constructing a Green’s function in the half-plane for the operator of the waves.     

$$u\tau $$-convergence in locally solid vector lattices

Let \((x_\alpha )\) be a net in a locally solid vector lattice \((X,\tau )\); we say that \((x_\alpha )\) is unbounded \(\tau \)-convergent to a vector \(x\in X\) if \(|x_\alpha -x |\wedge w \xrightarrow {\tau } 0\) for all \(w\in X_+\). In this paper, we study general properties of unbounded \(\tau \)-convergence (shortly \(u\tau \)-convergence). \(u\tau \)-convergence generalizes unbounded norm convergence and unbounded absolute weak convergence in normed lattices that have been investigated recently. We introduce \(u\tau \)-topology and briefly study metrizability and completeness of this topology.     

Eigenvalue Counting Function for Robin Laplacians on Conical Domains

We study the discrete spectrum of the Robin Laplacian \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \(L^2(\Omega )\), \(u\mapsto -\Delta u, \quad D_n u=\alpha u \text { on }\partial \Omega \), where \(D_n\) is the outer unit normal derivative and \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^{3}\) is a conical domain with a regular cross-section \(\Theta \subset {\mathbb {S}}^2\), n is the outer unit normal, and \(\alpha >0\) is a fixed constant. It is known from previous papers that the bottom of the essential spectrum of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) is \(-\alpha ^2\) and that the finiteness of the discrete spectrum depends on the geometry of the cross-section. We show that the accumulation of the discrete spectrum of \(Q^\Omega _\alpha \) is determined by the discrete spectrum of an effective Hamiltonian defined on the boundary and far from the origin. By studying this model operator, we prove that the number of eigenvalues of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \((-\infty ,-\alpha ^2-\lambda )\), with \(\lambda >0\), behaves for \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) as

$$\begin{aligned} \dfrac{\alpha ^2}{8\pi \lambda } \int _{\partial \Theta } \kappa _+(s)^2\mathrm {d}s +o\left( \frac{1}{\lambda }\right) , \end{aligned}$$

where \(\kappa _+\) is the positive part of the geodesic curvature of the cross-section boundary.

     

Anderson Polymer in a Fractional Brownian Environment: Asymptotic Behavior of the Partition Function

We consider the Anderson polymer partition function

$$\begin{aligned} u(t):=\mathbb {E}^X\left[ e^{\int _0^t \mathrm {d}B^{X(s)}_s}\right] \,, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\{B^{x}_t\,;\, t\ge 0\}_{x\in \mathbb {Z}^d}\) is a family of independent fractional Brownian motions all with Hurst parameter \(H\in (0,1)\), and \(\{X(t)\}_{t\in \mathbb {R}^{\ge 0}}\) is a continuous-time simple symmetric random walk on \(\mathbb {Z}^d\) with jump rate \(\kappa \) and started from the origin. \(\mathbb {E}^X\) is the expectation with respect to this random walk. We prove that when \(H\le 1/2\), the function u(t) almost surely grows asymptotically like \(e^{\lambda t}\), where \(\lambda >0\) is a deterministic number. More precisely, we show that as t approaches \(+\infty \), the expression \(\{\frac{1}{t}\log u(t)\}_{t\in \mathbb {R}^{>0}}\) converges both almost surely and in the \(\hbox {L}^1\) sense to some positive deterministic number \(\lambda \). For \(H>1/2\), we first show that \(\lim _{t\rightarrow \infty } \frac{1}{t}\log u(t)\) exists both almost surely and in the \(\hbox {L}^1\) sense and equals a strictly positive deterministic number (possibly \(+\infty \)); hence, almost surely u(t) grows asymptotically at least like \(e^{\alpha t}\) for some deterministic constant \(\alpha >0\). On the other hand, we also show that almost surely and in the \(\hbox {L}^1\) sense, \(\limsup _{t\rightarrow \infty } \frac{1}{t\sqrt{\log t}}\log u(t)\) is a deterministic finite real number (possibly zero), hence proving that almost surely u(t) grows asymptotically at most like \(e^{\beta t\sqrt{\log t}}\) for some deterministic positive constant \(\beta \). Finally, for \(H>1/2\) when \(\mathbb {Z}^d\) is replaced by a circle endowed with a Hölder continuous covariance function, we show that \(\limsup _{t\rightarrow \infty } \frac{1}{t}\log u(t)\) is a deterministic finite positive real number, hence proving that almost surely u(t) grows asymptotically at most like \(e^{c t}\) for some deterministic positive constant c.

     

Positive solutions for a class of nonlinear fractional differential equations with nonlocal boundary value conditions

We use the fixed point index theory of condensing mapping in cones discuss the existence of positive solutions for the following boundary value problem of fractional differential equations in a Banach space E

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -D^{\,\beta }_{0^{+}}u(t)=f(t,u(t)),\quad t\in J, \\ u(0)=u^{\prime }(0)=\theta ,\quad u(1)=\rho \int _{0}^{1}u(t)dt,\\ \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

where both \(2<\beta \le 3\) and \(0<\rho <\beta \) are real numbers, \(J=[0,1]\), \(D^{\,\beta }_{0^{+}}\) is the Riemann–Liouville fractional derivative, \(f : J\times K \rightarrow K\) is continuous, K is a normal cone in Banach space E, \(\theta \) is the zero element of E. Under more general conditions of growth and noncompactness measure about nonlinearity f, we obtain the existence of positive solutions.

     

Mean curvature bounds and eigenvalues of Robin Laplacians

We consider the Laplacian with attractive Robin boundary conditions,

$$\begin{aligned} Q^\Omega _\alpha u=-\Delta u, \quad \dfrac{\partial u}{\partial n}=\alpha u \text { on } \partial \Omega , \end{aligned}$$

in a class of bounded smooth domains \(\Omega \in \mathbb {R}^\nu \); here \(n\) is the outward unit normal and \(\alpha >0\) is a constant. We show that for each \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) and \(\alpha \rightarrow +\infty \), the \(j\)th eigenvalue \(E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) has the asymptotics

$$\begin{aligned} E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )=-\alpha ^2 -(\nu -1)H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\,\alpha +{\mathcal O}(\alpha ^{2/3}), \end{aligned}$$

where \(H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\) is the maximum mean curvature at \(\partial \Omega \). The discussion of the reverse Faber-Krahn inequality gives rise to a new geometric problem concerning the minimization of \(H_\mathrm {max}\). In particular, we show that the ball is the strict minimizer of \(H_\mathrm {max}\) among the smooth star-shaped domains of a given volume, which leads to the following result: if \(B\) is a ball and \(\Omega \) is any other star-shaped smooth domain of the same volume, then for any fixed \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) we have \(E_j(Q^B_\alpha )>E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) for large \(\alpha \). An open question concerning a larger class of domains is formulated.

     

On a Weighted Singular Integral Operator with Shifts and Slowly Oscillating Data

Let \(\alpha ,\beta \) be orientation-preserving diffeomorphism (shifts) of \(\mathbb {R}_+=(0,\infty )\) onto itself with the only fixed points \(0\) and \(\infty \) and \(U_\alpha ,U_\beta \) be the isometric shift operators on \(L^p(\mathbb {R}_+)\) given by \(U_\alpha f=(\alpha ')^{1/p}(f\circ \alpha )\), \(U_\beta f=(\beta ')^{1/p}(f\circ \beta )\), and \(P_2^\pm =(I\pm S_2)/2\) where

$$\begin{aligned} (S_2 f)(t):=\frac{1}{\pi i}\int \limits _0^\infty \left( \frac{t}{\tau }\right) ^{1/2-1/p}\frac{f(\tau )}{\tau -t}\,d\tau , \quad t\in \mathbb {R}_+, \end{aligned}$$

is the weighted Cauchy singular integral operator. We prove that if \(\alpha ',\beta '\) and \(c,d\) are continuous on \(\mathbb {R}_+\) and slowly oscillating at \(0\) and \(\infty \), and

$$\begin{aligned} \limsup _{t\rightarrow s}|c(t)|<1, \quad \limsup _{t\rightarrow s}|d(t)|<1, \quad s\in \{0,\infty \}, \end{aligned}$$

then the operator \((I-cU_\alpha )P_2^++(I-dU_\beta )P_2^-\) is Fredholm on \(L^p(\mathbb {R}_+)\) and its index is equal to zero. Moreover, its regularizers are described.

     

Existence and concentration of solution for a class of fractional Hamiltonian systems with subquadratic potential

In this article, we consider the following fractional Hamiltonian systems:

$$\begin{aligned} {_{t}}D_{\infty }^{\alpha }({_{-\infty }}D_{t}^{\alpha }u) + \lambda L(t)u = \nabla W(t, u), \;\;t\in \mathbb {R}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\alpha \in (1/2, 1)\), \(\lambda >0\) is a parameter, \(L\in C(\mathbb {R}, \mathbb {R}^{n\times n})\) and \(W \in C^{1}(\mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {R}^n, \mathbb {R})\). Unlike most other papers on this problem, we require that L(t) is a positive semi-definite symmetric matrix for all \(t\in \mathbb {R}\), that is, \(L(t) \equiv 0\) is allowed to occur in some finite interval \(\mathbb {I}\) of \(\mathbb {R}\). Under some mild assumptions on W, we establish the existence of nontrivial weak solution, which vanish on \(\mathbb {R} \setminus \mathbb {I}\) as \(\lambda \rightarrow \infty ,\) and converge to \(\tilde{u}\) in \(H^{\alpha }(\mathbb {R})\); here \(\tilde{u} \in E_{0}^{\alpha }\) is nontrivial weak solution of the Dirichlet BVP for fractional Hamiltonian systems on the finite interval \(\mathbb {I}\). Furthermore, we give the multiplicity results for the above fractional Hamiltonian systems.

     

On the Diophantine equation $$X^{2N}+2^{2\alpha }5^{2\beta }{p}^{2\gamma } = Z^5$$

We prove that for each prime p, positive integer \(\alpha \), and non-negative integers \(\beta \) and \(\gamma \), the Diophantine equation \(X^{2N} + 2^{2\alpha }5^{2\beta }{p}^{2\gamma } = Z^5\) has no solution with N, X, \(Z\in \mathbb {Z}^+\), \(N > 1\), and \(\gcd (X,Z) = 1\).     

On Weak Invariance Principles for Partial Sums

Given a sequence of random functionals \(\bigl \{X_k(u)\bigr \}_{k \in \mathbb {Z}}\), \(u \in \mathbf{I}^d\), \(d \ge 1\), the normalized partial sums \(\check{S}_{nt}(u) = n^{-1/2}\bigl (X_1(u) + \cdots + X_{\lfloor n t \rfloor }(u)\bigr )\), \(t \in [0,1]\) and its polygonal version \({S}_{nt}(u)\) are considered under a weak dependence assumption and \(p > 2\) moments. Weak invariance principles in the space of continuous functions and càdlàg functions are established. A particular emphasis is put on the process \(\check{S}_{nt}(\widehat{\theta })\), where \(\widehat{\theta } \xrightarrow {\mathbb {P}} \theta \), and weaker moment conditions (\(p = 2\) if \(d = 1\)) are assumed.     

An Erdös–Révész Type Law of the Iterated Logarithm for Order Statistics of a Stationary Gaussian Process

Let \(\{X(t):t\in \mathbb R_+\}\) be a stationary Gaussian process with almost surely (a.s.) continuous sample paths, \(\mathbb E X(t) = 0, \mathbb E X^2(t) = 1\) and correlation function satisfying (i) \(r(t) = 1 - C|t|^{\alpha } + o(|t|^{\alpha })\) as \(t\rightarrow 0\) for some \(0\le \alpha \le 2\) and \(C>0\); (ii) \(\sup _{t\ge s}|r(t)|<1\) for each \(s>0\) and (iii) \(r(t) = O(t^{-\lambda })\) as \(t\rightarrow \infty \) for some \(\lambda >0\). For any \(n\ge 1\), consider n mutually independent copies of X and denote by \(\{X_{r:n}(t):t\ge 0\}\) the rth smallest order statistics process, \(1\le r\le n\). We provide a tractable criterion for assessing whether, for any positive, non-decreasing function \(f, \mathbb P(\mathscr {E}_f)=\mathbb P(X_{r:n}(t) > f(t)\, \text { i.o.})\) equals 0 or 1. Using this criterion we find, for a family of functions \(f_p(t)\) such that \(z_p(t)=\mathbb P(\sup _{s\in [0,1]}X_{r:n}(s)>f_p(t))=O((t\log ^{1-p} t)^{-1})\), that \(\mathbb P(\mathscr {E}_{f_p})= 1_{\{p\ge 0\}}\). Consequently, with \(\xi _p (t) = \sup \{s:0\le s\le t, X_{r:n}(s)\ge f_p(s)\}\), for \(p\ge 0\) we have \(\lim _{t\rightarrow \infty }\xi _p(t)=\infty \) and \(\limsup _{t\rightarrow \infty }(\xi _p(t)-t)=0\) a.s. Complementarily, we prove an Erdös–Révész type law of the iterated logarithm lower bound on \(\xi _p(t)\), namely, that \(\liminf _{t\rightarrow \infty }(\xi _p(t)-t)/h_p(t) = -1\) a.s. for \(p>1\) and \(\liminf _{t\rightarrow \infty }\log (\xi _p(t)/t)/(h_p(t)/t) = -1\) a.s. for \(p\in (0,1]\), where \(h_p(t)=(1/z_p(t))p\log \log t\).     

Infiltration Equation with Degeneracy on the Boundary

This paper is mainly about the infiltration equation

$$ {u_{t}}= \operatorname{div} \bigl(a(x)|u|^{\alpha }{ \vert { \nabla u} \vert ^{p-2}}\nabla u\bigr),\quad (x,t) \in \Omega \times (0,T), $$

where \(p>1\), \(\alpha >0\), \(a(x)\in C^{1}(\overline{\Omega })\), \(a(x)\geq 0\) with \(a(x)|_{x\in \partial \Omega }=0\). If there is a constant \(\beta \) such that \(\int_{\Omega }a^{-\beta }(x)dx\leq c\), \(p>1+\frac{1}{\beta }\), then the weak solution is smooth enough to define the trace on the boundary, the stability of the weak solutions can be proved as usual. Meanwhile, if for any \(\beta >\frac{1}{p-1}\), \(\int_{\Omega }a^{-\beta }(x)dxdt=\infty \), then the weak solution lacks the regularity to define the trace on the boundary. The main innovation of this paper is to introduce a new kind of the weak solutions. By these new definitions of the weak solutions, one can study the stability of the weak solutions without any boundary value condition.

     

The solution gap of the Brezis–Nirenberg problem on the hyperbolic space

We consider the positive solutions of the nonlinear eigenvalue problem \(-\Delta _{\mathbb {H}^n} u = \lambda u + u^p, \) with \(p=\frac{n+2}{n-2}\) and \(u \in H_0^1(\Omega ),\) where \(\Omega \) is a geodesic ball of radius \(\theta _1\) on \(\mathbb {H}^n.\) For radial solutions, this equation can be written as an ordinary differential equation having n as a parameter. In this setting, the problem can be extended to consider real values of n. We show that if \(2<n<4\) this problem has a unique positive solution if and only if \(\lambda \in \left( n(n-2)/4 +L^*\,,\, \lambda _1\right) .\) Here \(L^*\) is the first positive value of \(L = -\ell (\ell +1)\) for which a suitably defined associated Legendre function \(P_{\ell }^{-\alpha }(\cosh \theta ) >0\) if \(0 < \theta <\theta _1\) and \(P_{\ell }^{-\alpha }(\cosh \theta _1)=0,\) with \(\alpha = (2-n)/2\).     

Lower order eigenvalues of a system of equations of the drifting Laplacian on the metric measure spaces

Let \(\Omega \) be a bounded domain with smooth boundary in an n-dimensional metric measure space \((\mathbb {R}^n, \langle ,\rangle , e^{-\phi }dv)\) and let \(\mathbf {u}=(u^1, \ldots , u^n)\) be a vector-valued function from \(\Omega \) to \(\mathbb {R}^n\). In this paper, we investigate the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem of a system of equations of the drifting Laplacian: \(\mathbb {L}_{\phi } \mathbf {u} + \alpha [ \nabla (\mathrm {div}\mathbf { u}) -\nabla \phi \mathrm {div} \mathbf {u}]= - \widetilde{\sigma } \mathbf {u}\), in \( \Omega \), and \(u|_{\partial \Omega }=0,\) where \(\mathbb {L}_{\phi } = \Delta - \nabla \phi \cdot \nabla \) is the drifting Laplacian and \(\alpha \) is a nonnegative constant. We establish some universal inequalities for lower order eigenvalues of this problem on the metric measure space \((\mathbb {R}^n, \langle ,\rangle , e^{-\phi }dv)\) and the Gaussian shrinking soliton \((\mathbb {R}^n, \langle ,\rangle _{\mathrm {can}}, e^{-\frac{|x|^2}{4}}dv, \frac{1}{2})\). Moreover, we give an estimate for the upper bound of the second eigenvalue of this problem in terms of its first eigenvalue on the gradient product Ricci soliton \((\Sigma \times \mathbb {R}, \langle ,\rangle , e^{-\frac{\kappa t^2}{2}}dv, \kappa )\), where \( \Sigma \) is an Einstein manifold with constant Ricci curvature \(\kappa \).     

On a Fractional $$ p \& q$$ Laplacian Problem with Critical Sobolev–Hardy Exponents

We consider the following fractional \( p \& q\) Laplacian problem with critical Sobolev–Hardy exponents

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} (-\Delta )^{s}_{p} u + (-\Delta )^{s}_{q} u = \frac{|u|^{p^{*}_{s}(\alpha )-2}u}{|x|^{\alpha }}+ \lambda f(x, u) &{} \text{ in } \Omega \\ u=0 &{} \text{ in } \mathbb {R}^{N}{\setminus } \Omega , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(0<s<1\), \(1\le q<p<\frac{N}{s}\), \((-\Delta )^{s}_{r}\), with \(r\in \{p,q\}\), is the fractional r-Laplacian operator, \(\lambda \) is a positive parameter, \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^{N}\) is an open bounded domain with smooth boundary, \(0\le \alpha <sp\), and \(p^{*}_{s}(\alpha )=\frac{p(N-\alpha )}{N-sp}\) is the so-called Hardy–Sobolev critical exponent. Using concentration-compactness principle and the mountain pass lemma due to Kajikiya [23], we show the existence of infinitely many solutions which tend to be zero provided that \(\lambda \) belongs to a suitable range.