Lyapunov inequalities of nested fractional boundary value problems and applications (Q1643950)

In this article there are considered the following two classes of nested fractional half-linear boundary value problems including both of the Riemann-Liouville and Caputo types fractional derivatives \[ \begin{cases} ^C D^\alpha_{a+}(\phi_{\beta_2}( D^\alpha_{b-}(\phi_{\beta_1} ( ^C D^\alpha_{a+} x )))) - q(t)\phi_{\beta_1, \beta_2} x =0, \;\;\;a \leq t \leq b, \\ x^{(k)}(a)=0, \;\;x^{(k)}(b)=0, \;\;k=0, 1,\dots, n-1, \end{cases} \] and \[ \begin{cases} ^C D^\alpha_{a+}( r_2(t) \phi_{\beta_2}( D^\alpha_{b-}( r_1(t) \phi_{\beta_1} ( ^C D^\alpha_{a+} x )))) - q(t)\phi_{\beta_1, \beta_2} x =0, \;a \leq t \leq b, \\ x^{(k)}(a)=0, \;\;x^{(k)}(b)=0, \;\;k=0, 1, \dots, n-1, \end{cases} \] where \( ^C D^\alpha_{a+}\) and \( D^\alpha_{b-}\) are the left sided Caputo and the right sided Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives of order \(\alpha\) with \(n-1 < \alpha \leq n, n \in \mathbb{N}, n \geq 2\) respectively; the half-linear signet-power operator \(\phi_v x = |x|^{v-1} \;x, v \in (0,\infty)\); \(q, r_1, r_2 \in C(\mathbb{R}, \mathbb{R})\) such that \(r_i(t) > 0, i = 1, 2\) and \(r_2\) is an increasing function on \([a, b]\). The main theoretical results are the obtained Lyapunov inequalities for both boundary value problems under some relevant conditions. As application of the obtained Lyapunov inequalities there are established qualitative properties of the nontrivial solutions of these nested fractional boundary value problems. It is studied disconjugacy, nonexistence, upper bound estimation for maximum number of zeros of the nontrivial solutions, distance between consecutive zeros of the oscillatory solutions and spreading region of the eigenvalues in the corresponding nested fractional eigenvalue problems.