Location of solutions of Fredholm-Nemytskii integral equations from a Whittaker-type operator (Q2078910)

The paper deals with the following Fredholm-Nemytskii integral equations: \[ \phi(x)=f(x) +\lambda \int_{a}^{b} \mathcal{N}(x,t)\, \mathcal{H}(\phi)\, dt, \quad x\in[a,b], \quad \lambda \in \mathbb{R},\tag{1} \] where \(f\in \mathcal{C}[a,b]\), the kernel \(\mathcal{N}(x,t)\) is a known function in \([a,b]\times [a,b]\), \(\mathcal{H}\) is the Nemytskii operator \(\mathcal{H} : \mathcal{C}[a,b]\rightarrow\mathcal{C}[a,b]\) such that \(\mathcal{H}(\phi)(x)=H (\phi(x))\), where \(H : \mathbb{R}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}\), and \(\phi(x)\) is the unknown function to be determined. Equation (1), in general, cannot be solved analytically. Therefore, the following operator equation has been introduced \[ [\mathcal{G}](x) = \phi(x) -f(x) -\lambda \int_{a}^{b} \mathcal{N}(x,t)\, \mathcal{H}(\phi)\, dt, \quad x\in[a,b], \quad \lambda \in \mathbb{R}.\tag{2} \] A solution \(\phi^{*}\) of (2) is a solution to (1). To approximate \(\phi^{*}\), the method of successive approximations is used. In the case considered in the paper, the following Whittaker-type iterative method is used: \[ \phi_{n+1}=W(\phi_{n}) = \phi_{n} - A \mathcal{G}(\phi_{n}), \quad n\ge 0, \quad \mbox{with~} \phi_{0} \mbox{~given~in~} \mathcal{C}[a,b]. \] The global convergence \(\lim_{n} \phi_{n} =\phi^{*}\) is analyzed in order to construct the solutions of Equation (1). The paper is well written and the proofs are given with all necessary details.