On existence for polynomial-like iterative equations (Q1885238)

This paper deals with the problem of existence of solutions for the functional (polynomial-like iterative) equation \[ (E): f^{n}(x)+\lambda _{n-1}f^{n-1}(x)+\cdots +\lambda _{1}f(x)=F(x), \] where \(F\) is a given real function, \(\lambda _{i}\) are given real values (\( i=1,\dots ,n-1\)), \(f\) is an unknown real function, and \(f^{k}\) means the \(k\)-th iterate of \(f,\) \(k=1,\dots ,n.\) The author establishes the following assumptions on \(F\): a) \(F\in C^{1}( \mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\) and \(F(0)=0;\) b) \(| F^{\prime }(x)| \leq | F^{\prime }(0)| \) for all \(x\in \mathbb{R},\) and there exist two positive real constants \(M_{0},\) \(K_{0}\) such that \(| F(x)| \leq M_{0}\) and \(| F^{\prime }(x)-F^{\prime }(y)| \leq K_{0}| x-y| \) for all \(x,y\in \mathbb{R}\). Then four cases are discussed: (1) \(F^{\prime }(0)>1\), all \(\lambda _{i}\leq 0\), and \(\sum_{i=1}^{n-1}| \lambda _{i}| <1\); (2) \(F^{\prime }(0)<-1,\) \(n\) is odd, \(\lambda _{i}\leq 0\) for odd \(i\) and \( \lambda _{i}\geq 0\) for even \(i\), \(\sum_{i=1}^{n-1} | \lambda _{i}| <1\); (3) \(F^{\prime }(0)=1,\) all \(\lambda _{i}\leq 0\), \( 0<\sum_{i=1}^{n-1}| \lambda _{i}| <1\); (4) \(F^{\prime }(0)=-1,\) \(n\) is odd, \(\lambda _{i}\leq 0\) for odd \(i\) and \( \lambda _{i}\geq 0\) for even \(i\), \(0<\sum_{i=1}^{n-1} | \lambda _{i}| <1\). In these cases it is proved the existence of invertible solutions \(f\in C^{1}(I,\mathbb{R})\) for \((E)\), where \(I\) is a small neighbourhood of \(x=0.\) The strategy is to consider the auxiliary equation \[ (E'): \phi ^{n}(c^{n}s)+\lambda _{n-1}\phi ^{n-1}(c^{n-1}s)+\cdots +\lambda _{1}\phi (cs)=F(\phi (s)), \] with \(c\) a real constant, \(c\notin \{0,1\}\), \(s\in\mathbb{R}\); to obtain solutions \(\phi \) of \((E')\) by applying the Schauder's fixed point theorem; and finally to construct the solution \(f\) from \(\phi\).