Stability for functional differential equations and some variational problems (Q910920): Difference between revisions

The application of Razumikhin type stability results for functional differential equations leads to certain nonstandard variational problems. These problems are posed in this paper. A typical one is the following: for fixed \(T>0\) and given sequences \(\{b_ i\}\), \(\{c_ i\}\) of nonnegative numbers find or approximate sup\(\{\) f(t): \(f\in C^{\infty}([0,T],R)\), \(f(0)=0\), \(-b_ i\leq f^{(i)}(t)\leq c_ i\), \(i=0,1,...\}\), \(0\leq t\leq T\). Only the particular case \(T=\pi /2\), \(b_ i=c_ i=1\) is solved in this paper: \(\sup_ ff(t)=\sin t\), \(0\leq t\leq \pi /2\). Applying this result, it is shown that Barnea's method [\textit{D. I. Barnea}, SIAM J. Appl. Math. 17, 681-697 (1969; Zbl 0181.101)] can be used to get sharp stability results for linear scalar functional differential equations. Especially, if \(\int^{0}_{-r}| s| d\mu (s)\leq \pi /2\) and \(\mu\) is nondecreasing, then the zero solution of \(x'(t)=-\int^{0}_{-r}x(t+s)d\mu (s)\) is stable.