Uniqueness and existence results for ordinary differential equations (Q819699)

The existence and uniqueness of Carathéodory-type solution are studied for the first-order differential equation \(x^{\prime}\left( t\right) =f\left( t,x\left( t\right) \right) ,\) subject to the initial condition \(x\left( t_{0}\right) =x_{0}.\) The function \(f:I\times J\rightarrow\mathbb{R}\), \(I=\left[ t_{0},t_{0}+T\right] ,\) \(J=\left[ x_{0},x_{0}+R\right] \), is supposed to be nonlinear, discontinuous and positive for a. a. \(t\in I\) and for all \(x\in\mathbb{R}.\) Different additional hypotheses are imposed on \(f\) in order to obtain either at most one or exactly one solution for the above initial value problem. One of these results asserts that, if the values of \(f\) are positive and bounded above by \(R/T,\) and if \(f\) is monotone nonincreasing or nondecreasing with respect to both of its arguments, then the initial value problem has a unique solution. The theoretical results are applied to some particular examples.