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Existence results for nonlocal boundary value problems of fractional differential equations and inclusions with strip conditions
Boundary Value Problems volume 2012, Article number: 55 (2012)
Abstract
This article studies a new class of nonlocal boundary value problems of nonlinear differential equations and inclusions of fractional order with strip conditions. We extend the idea of four-point nonlocal boundary conditions to nonlocal strip conditions of the form: , . These strip conditions may be regarded as six-point boundary conditions. Some new existence and uniqueness results are obtained for this class of nonlocal problems by using standard fixed point theorems and Leray-Schauder degree theory. Some illustrative examples are also discussed.
MSC 2000: 26A33; 34A12; 34A40.
1 Introduction
The subject of fractional calculus has recently evolved as an interesting and popular field of research. A variety of results on initial and boundary value problems of fractional order can easily be found in the recent literature on the topic. These results involve the theoretical development as well as the methods of solution for the fractional-order problems. It is mainly due to the extensive application of fractional calculus in the mathematical modeling of physical, engineering, and biological phenomena. For some recent results on the topic, see [1–19] and the references therein.
In this article, we discuss the existence and uniqueness of solutions for a boundary value problem of nonlinear fractional differential equations and inclusions of order q ∈ (1, 2] with nonlocal strip conditions. As a first problem, we consider the following boundary value problem of fractional differential equations
where cDq denotes the Caputo fractional derivative of order q, is a given continuous function and σ, η are appropriately chosen real numbers.
The boundary conditions in the problem (1.1) can be regarded as six-point nonlocal boundary conditions, which reduces to the typical integral boundary conditions in the limit α, γ → 0, β, δ → 1. Integral boundary conditions have various applications in applied fields such as blood flow problems, chemical engineering, thermoelasticity, underground water flow, population dynamics, etc. For a detailed description of the integral boundary conditions, we refer the reader to the articles [20, 21] and references therein. Regarding the application of the strip conditions of fixed size, we know that such conditions appear in the mathematical modeling of real world problems, for example, see [22, 23].
As a second problem, we study a two-strip boundary value problem of fractional differential inclusions given by
where is a multivalued map, is the family of all subsets of ℝ.
We establish existence results for the problem (1.2), when the right-hand side is convex as well as non-convex valued. The first result relies on the nonlinear alternative of Leray-Schauder type. In the second result, we shall combine the nonlinear alternative of Leray-Schauder type for single-valued maps with a selection theorem due to Bressan and Colombo for lower semicontinuous multivalued maps with nonempty closed and decomposable values, while in the third result, we shall use the fixed point theorem for contraction multivalued maps due to Covitz and Nadler.
The methods used are standard, however their exposition in the framework of problems (1.1) and (1.2) is new.
2 Linear problem
Let us recall some basic definitions of fractional calculus [24–26].
Definition 2.1 For at least n-times continuously differentiable function , the Caputo derivative of fractional order q is defined as
where [q] denotes the integer part of the real number q.
Definition 2.2 The Riemann-Liouville fractional integral of order q is defined as
provided the integral exists.
By a solution of (1.1), we mean a continuous function x(t) which satisfies the equation cDqx(t) = f (t, x(t)), 0 < t < 1, together with the boundary conditions of (1.1).
To define a fixed point problem associated with (1.1), we need the following lemma, which deals with the linear variant of problem (1.1).
Lemma 2.3 For a given , the solution of the fractional differential equation
subject to the boundary conditions in (1.1) is given by
where
Proof. It is well known that the solution of (2.1) can be written as [24]
where are constants. Applying the boundary conditions given in (1.1), we find that
Solving these equations simultaneously, we find that
Substituting the values of c0 and c1 in (2.3), we obtain the solution (2.2). □
3 Existence results for single-valued case
Let denotes the Banach space of all continuous functions from [0, 1] → ℝ endowed with the norm defined by .
In view of Lemma 2.3, we define an operator by
Observe that the problem (1.1) has solutions if and only if the operator equation F x = x has fixed points.
For the forthcoming analysis, we need the following assumptions:
(A 1 ) |f (t, x) - f (t, y)| ≤ L|x - y|, ∀t ∈ [0, 1], L > 0, x, y ∈ ℝ;
(A 2 ) |f (t, x)| ≤ μ(t), ∀(t, x) ∈ [0, 1] × ℝ, and μ ∈ C([0, 1], ℝ+).
For convenience, let us set
where
Theorem 3.1 Assume that is a jointly continuous function and satisfies the assumption (A1) with L < 1/Λ, where Λ is given by (3.2). Then the boundary value problem (1.1) has a unique solution.
Proof. Setting and choosing , we show that F B r ⊂ B r , where . For x ∈ B r , we have
Now, for we obtain
where Λ is given by (3.2). Observe that Λ depends only on the parameters involved in the problem. As L < 1/ Λ, therefore F is a contraction. Thus, the conclusion of the theorem follows by the contraction mapping principle (Banach fixed point theorem). □
Now, we prove the existence of solutions of (1.1) by applying Krasnoselskii's fixed point theorem [27].
Theorem 3.2 (Krasnoselskii's fixed point theorem). Let M be a closed, bounded, convex, and nonempty subset of a Banach space X. Let A, B be the operators such that (i) Ax + By ∈ M whenever x, y ∈ M; (ii) A is compact and continuous; (iii) B is a contraction mapping. Then there exists z ∈ M such that z = Az + Bz.
Theorem 3.3 Let be a jointly continuous function satisfying the assumptions (A1) and (A2) with
Then the boundary value problem (1.1) has at least one solution on [0, 1].
Proof. Letting , we fix
and consider . We define the operators and on as
For , we find that
Thus, It follows from the assumption (A1) together with (3.3) that is a contraction mapping. Continuity of f implies that the operator is continuous. Also, is uniformly bounded on as
Now we prove the compactness of the operator .
In view of (A1), we define , and consequently we have
which is independent of x. Thus, is equicontinuous. Hence, by the Arzelá-Ascoli Theorem, is compact on Thus all the assumptions of Theorem 3.2 are satisfied. So the conclusion of Theorem 3.2 implies that the boundary value problem (1.1) has at least one solution on [0, 1]. □
Our next existence result is based on Leray-Schauder degree theory.
Theorem 3.4 Let . Assume that there exist constants , where Λ is given by (3.2) and M > 0 such that |f(t, x)| ≤κ|x|+M for all t ∈ [0, 1], x ∈ C[0, 1]. Then the boundary value problem (1.1) has at least one solution.
Proof. Consider the fixed point problem
where F is defined by (3.1). In view of the fixed point problem (3.4), we just need to prove the existence of at least one solution x ∈ C[0, 1] satisfying (3.4). Define a suitable ball B R ⊂ C[0, 1] with radius R > 0 as
where R will be fixed later. Then, it is sufficient to show that satisfies
Let us set
Then, by the Arzelá-Ascoli Theorem, h λ (x) = x - H (λ, x) = x - λF x is completely continuous. If (3.5) is true, then the following Leray-Schauder degrees are well defined and by the homotopy invariance of topological degree, it follows that
where I denotes the unit operator. By the nonzero property of Leray-Schauder degree, h1(t) = x - λ F x = 0 for at least one x ∈ B R . In order to prove (3.5), we assume that x = λ F x, λ ∈ [0, 1]. Then for x ∈ ∂B R and t ∈ [0, 1] we have
which, on taking norm and solving for ‖x‖, yields
Letting , (3.5) holds. This completes the proof. □
Example 3.5 Consider the following strip fractional boundary value problem
Here, q = 3/2, σ = 1, η = 1, α = 1/3, β = 1/2, γ = 2/3, δ = 3/4 and . As , therefore, (A1) is satisfied with . Further, Δ1 = 65/72, Δ2 = 535/288, Δ = 4945/5184, and
Clearly, L Λ = 0.282191 < 1. Thus, by the conclusion of Theorem 3.1, the boundary value problem (3.6) has a unique solution on [0, 1].
Example 3.6 Consider the following boundary value problem
Here,
Clearly M = 1 and
Thus, all the conditions of Theorem 3.4 are satisfied and consequently the problem (3.7) has at least one solution.
4 Existence results for multi-valued case
4.1 Preliminaries
Let us recall some basic definitions on multi-valued maps [28, 29].
For a normed space (X, ‖.‖), let , , , and . A multi-valued map is convex (closed) valued if G(x) is convex (closed) for all x ∈ X. The map G is bounded on bounded sets if is bounded in X for all (i.e., . G is called upper semi-continuous (u.s.c.) on X if for each x0 ∈ X, the set G(x0) is a nonempty closed subset of X, and if for each open set N of X containing G(x0), there exists an open neighborhood of x0 such that . G is said to be completely continuous if is relatively compact for every . If the multi-valued map G is completely continuous with nonempty compact values, then G is u.s.c. if and only if G has a closed graph, i.e., x n → x*, y n → y*, y n ∈ G(x n ) imply y* ∈ G(x*). G has a fixed point if there is x ∈ X such that x ∈ G(x). The fixed point set of the multivalued operator G will be denoted by FixG. A multivalued map is said to be measurable if for every , the function
is measurable.
Let C([0, 1]) denotes a Banach space of continuous functions from [0, 1] into ℝ with the norm . Let L1([0, 1], ℝ) be the Banach space of measurable functions x : [0, 1] → ℝ which are Lebesgue integrable and normed by .
Definition 4.1 A multivalued map is said to be Carathéodory if
(i) t ↦ F (t, x) is measurable for each x ∈ ℝ;
(ii) x ↦ F (t, x) is upper semicontinuous for almost all t ∈ [0, 1];
Further a Carathéodory function F is called L 1 -Carathéodory if
(iii) for each α > 0, there exists such that
for all ‖x‖∞ ≤ α and for a. e. t ∈ [0, 1].
For each , define the set of selections of F by
Let X be a nonempty closed subset of a Banach space E and be a multivalued operator with nonempty closed values. G is lower semi-continuous (l.s.c.) if the set {y ∈ X : G(y) ∩ B ≠ ∅} is open for any open set B in E. Let A be a subset of [0, 1] × ℝ. A is measurable if A belongs to the σ-algebra generated by all sets of the form , where is Lebesgue measurable in [0, 1] and is Borel measurable in ℝ. A subset of L1([0, 1], ℝ) is decomposable if for all and measurable , the function , where stands for the characteristic function of .
Definition 4.2 Let Y be a separable metric space and let be a multivalued operator. We say N has a property (BC) if N is lower semi-continuous (l.s.c.) and has nonempty closed and decomposable values.
Let be a multivalued map with nonempty compact values. Define a multivalued operator associated with F as
which is called the Nemytskii operator associated with F.
Definition 4.3 Let be a multivalued function with nonempty compact values. We say F is of lower semi-continuous type (l.s.c. type) if its associated Nemytskii operator is lower semi-continuous and has nonempty closed and decomposable values.
Let (X, d) be a metric space induced from the normed space (X; ‖.‖). Consider given by
where d(A, b) = infa∈Ad(a; b) and d(a, B) = infb∈Bd(a; b). Then (P b,cl (X), H d ) is a metric space and (P cl (X), H d ) is a generalized metric space (see [30]).
Definition 4.4 A multivalued operator N : X → P cl (X) is called:
(a) γ-Lipschitz if and only if there exists γ > 0 such that
(b) a contraction if and only if it is γ-Lipschitz with γ < 1.
The following lemmas will be used in the sequel.
Lemma 4.5 (Nonlinear alternative for Kakutani maps) [31]. Let E be a Banach space, C is a closed convex subset of E, U is an open subset of C and 0 ∈ U. Suppose that is a upper semicontinuous compact map; here denotes the family of nonempty, compact convex subsets of C. Then either
(i) F has a fixed point in , or
(ii) there is a u ∈ ∂U and λ ∈ (0, 1) with u ∈ λF(u).
Lemma 4.6 [32] Let X be a Banach space. Let be an L1-Carathéodory multivalued map and let θ be a linear continuous mapping from L1([0, 1], X) to C([0, 1], X). Then the operator
is a closed graph operator in C([0, 1], X) × C([0, 1], X).
Lemma 4.7 [33] Let Y be a separable metric space and let be a multivalued operator satisfying the property (BC). Then N has a continuous selection, that is, there exists a continuous function (single-valued) such that g(x) ∈ N(x) for every x ∈ Y .
Lemma 4.8 [34] Let (X, d) be a complete metric space. If N : X → P cl (X) is a contraction, then FixN ≠ ∅.
Definition 4.9 A function x ∈ C2([0, 1], ℝ) is a solution of the problem (1.2) if , and there exists a function f ∈ L1([0, 1], ℝ) such that
f(t) ∈ F (t, x(t)) a.e. on [0, 1] and
4.2 The Carathéodory case
Theorem 4.10 Assume that:
(H1) is Carathéodory and has nonempty compact and convex values;
(H2) there exists a continuous nondecreasing function ψ : [0, ∞) → (0, ∞) and a function such that
(H3) there exists a constant M > 0 such that
Then the boundary value problem (1.2) has at least one solution on [0, 1].
Proof. Define the operator by
for f ∈ S F,x . We will show that Ω F satisfies the assumptions of the nonlinear alternative of Leray-Schauder type. The proof consists of several steps. As a first step, we show that Ω F is convex for each x ∈ C([0, 1], ℝ). This step is obvious since S F,x is convex (F has convex values), and therefore we omit the proof.
In the second step, we show that Ω F maps bounded sets (balls) into bounded sets in C([0, 1], ℝ). For a positive number ρ, let B ρ = {x ∈ C([0, 1], ℝ): ‖x‖ ≤ ρ} be a bounded ball in C([0, 1], ℝ). Then, for each h ∈ Ω F (x), x ∈ B ρ , there exists f ∈ S F,x such that
Then for t∈[0, 1] we have
Thus,
Now we show that Ω F maps bounded sets into ;equicontinuous sets of C([0, 1], ℝ).
Let t', t'' ∈ [0, 1] with t' < t'' and x ∈ B ρ . For each h ∈ Ω F (x), we obtain
Obviously the right-hand side of the above inequality tends to zero independently of x ∈ B ρ as t'' - t' → 0. As Ω F satisfies the above three assumptions, therefore it follows by the Ascoli-Arzelá theorem that is completely continuous.
In our next step, we show that Ω F has a closed graph. Let , and . Then we need to show that . Associated with h n ∈ Ω F (x n ), there exists such that for each t ∈ [0, 1],
Thus it suffices to show that there exists such that for each t ∈ [0, 1],
Let us consider the linear operator θ: L1([0, 1], ℝ) → C([0, 1], ℝ) given by
Observe that