Global invertibility of nonsmooth mappings (Q1116444)

In 1906 Hadamard established the following criterion for the global invertibility of continuously differentiable maps f from \(R^ n\) into \(R^ n:\) Hadamard's theorem. Suppose the derivative \(f'(x)\) is invertible for every x in \(R^ n\) and suppose \[ \int^{\infty}_{0}\inf_{| x| \leq t}(1/\| f'(x)^{- 1}\|)dt\quad =\quad \infty. \] Then f maps \(R^ n\) diffeomorphically onto \(R^ n.\) If f is only locally Lipschitz continuous, then the derivative \(f'(x)\) may not exist, but we can replace it with a generalized derivative \(\partial f(x)\) which is a certain compact, convex collection of linear transformations of \(R^ n\). Using \(\partial f(x)\) we extend Hadamard's theorem to the class of locally Lipschitz continuous maps. The question of global invertibility for nonsmooth maps arises naturally in several applied areas, including electrical network theory and nonlinear elasticity.