Ulam stability of operators (Q2362252)

The stability problem for functional equations was originally raised by Stanisław Marcin Ulam in the fall term of the year 1940, when he gave a wide ranging talk before the Mathematics Club of the University of Wisconsin. Since then several books, survey papers as well as many of articles were published. Therefore, as the authors write in the Preface of this book, the aim of this book is not merely to present a survey of research papers dealing with the stability theory of functional equations, but rather to propose a somewhat new systematic approach to investigating Ulam stability. Some open problems are also stated, suggesting further possible exploration in the corresponding areas. This book consists of six chapters. Each of them has a short and informative abstract as well as a list of references. Chapter 1 contains a brief introduction to the subject and the authors also cite here several references to sources with more detailed information on stability theory. In Chapter 2, the authors suggest a new approach to the issue in question. The majority of existing results on Ulam stability are given for equations and operators acting on normed or metric spaces. Nevertheless, the authors consider here linear spaces endowed with gauges and they investigate stability of linear operators acting on such spaces. In such a way, a general characterization for the Ulam stability can be obtained. Results are then applied to the study of the stability of some differential operators and some classical operators (such as Bernstein, Száz-Mirakjan, Bernstein-Schnabl operators) of approximation theory. In Chapter 3, the Ulam stability of differential operators is investigated. It contains results on the Ulam stability of linear differential equations, linear differential operators, and partial differential operators in Banach spaces. Some well-known estimates are also improved. The authors present results on the best constant in Ulam stability of some classical functional equations and some linear operators in approximation theory. Linear difference and functional equations in a single variable have been deeply studied in the literature. They are examples of equations defined by operators of polynomial forms. The results on stability of such equations are obtained by the iterative method and fixed point method. A complete characterization of Ulam stability is available for linear difference and functional equations of higher order with constant coefficients. This is the main purpose of Chapter 5. The last chapter deals with some possible approaches to the study the situations where there is a lack of stability in some sense. Several quite general results are already known. However, in general, the subject of nonstability has not yet been studied extensively, mainly because it is not easy to formulate in a precise form a general definition of this notion. The linear difference equation of first order, the linear difference equation of higher order, the linear functional equation of first order and also the linear functional equation of higher order are studied from this point of view.