Abstract nonlinear Volterra integrodifferential equations with nonsmooth kernels (Q1175694)

The authors employ a careful application of the contraction mapping principle (rather than techniques of maximum monotone operators or nonlinear semigroup theory) to establish the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem on an arbitrary time interval \((0,T)\), \(T > 0\), for an abstract, nonlinear Volterra integrodifferential equation with a singular kernel that need not be of convolution type; in the special case of a convolution kernel the assumptions permit an integrable singularity at zero. As an application, they discuss the well-posedness of the initial- boundary value problem, in an arbitrary number of space dimensions, modelling heat conduction in a material with memory, and they generalize existence results of several authors including those of \textit{S.-O. Londen} and the reviewer [J. Integral Equations 6, 11-50 (1984; Zbl 0537.45011)] by weakening the assumptions regarding the material functions and the memory kernel. The convolution kernel \(a \in L^ 1(0, + \infty)\), but no other assumptions relevant to the physical problem are used; however, no results on asymptotic behavior of solutions as \(t \to \infty\) [op. cit.] are obtained.