The superposition operator in the space of functions continuous and converging at infinity on the real half-axis (Q2297976)

The superposition operator (also called Nemytskij oprator) $(Fx)(t)=f(t,x(t))$ generated by some function $f: I\times\mathbb R\to\mathbb R$ ($I\subseteq\mathbb R$ some interval) has been studied by many authors in various spaces $X$ of functions $x: I\to\mathbb R$. An important problem is here to find conditions on $f$ under which $F$ is ``well behaved'' in $X$. In most cases, such conditions are only sufficient; only in the much simpler autonomous case $f: \mathbb R\to\mathbb R$ they sometimes turn out to be also necessary. Most results in the literature refer here to the case when $I$ is a compact interval. In this paper, the authors study superposition operators on the semiaxis $I=[0,\infty)$ and basically impose three conditions on $f$: (a) $f$ is continuous on $I$; (b) for each $r>0$, $f(t,\cdot)$ is continuous on $[-r,r]$, uniformly w.r.t. $t\in I$; (c) for each $\varepsilon>0$ one can find $T>0$ such that $|f(s,u)-f(t,u)|\le\varepsilon$ for $s,t\ge T$ and $u\in\mathbb R$. Under these hypotheses, the authors prove that the operator $F$ maps the space $X=CC(I)$ of all continuous functions which have a limit at $\infty$, equipped with the natural sup norm, into itself, and is continuous. Moreover, $F$ maps every bounded subset of $X$ which is locally equicontinuous on $I$ into a set which is also locally equicontinuous on $I$. An example of a function which satisfies (a)/(b)/(c) is that of separated variables, i.e., $f(t,u)=a(t)b(u)$ with $a\in X$ and $b$ continuous and bounded on $I$.