The Bohl spectrum for linear nonautonomous differential equations (Q1692101)

A central difference between the Lyapunov and the Sacker-Sell spectrum of linear ordinary differential equations \[ \dot x=A(t)x \] in \({\mathbb R}^d\) is as follows: The Lyapunov spectrum is solution-based, i.e. it depends on Lyapunov exponents measuring the exponential growth of individual solutions. The Sacker-Sell spectrum, however, is based on the notion of an exponential dichotomy, which describes the uniform growth behavior in entire (invariant) subspaces. In this interesting paper, the authors establish the Bohl spectrum as third spectral notion located between the well-known spectra mentioned above. Rather than Lyapunov exponents, the concept of Bohl exponents measuring the uniform exponential growth is used. It is shown that the Bohl spectrum is the union of finitely many intervals, which are not necessarily open, and induces a filtration of the state space being finer than for the Sacker-Sell spectrum. By means of an explicit example for bounded \(A:[0,\infty)\to{\mathbb R}^{d\times d}\), it is shown that the Bohl spectrum is finer than the Sacker-Sell spectrum. However, for bounded diagonalizable, integrally separated and systems with discrete Sacker-Sell spectrum, they coincide. An example with negative Bohl spectrum is constructed, whose trivial solution is exponentially stable under higher-order nonlinear perturbations, although the Sacker-Sell spectrum contains \(0\). Nevertheless, it is shown that in general a negative Bohl spectrum of the linear part does not imply nonlinear exponential stability.