A necessary and sufficient condition for well-posedness of initial value problems of retarded functional differential equations (Q2358277)

The paper is concerned with the initial value problem \[ \begin{cases} \dot x(t)=F(t,x_t),\quad t\geq t_0,\\ x_{t_0}=\phi_0,\quad (t_0,\phi_0)\in D, \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(F:D\subset \mathbb{R}\times X\to \mathbb{E}\) is continuous and Lipschitz about continuations of \((t_0,\phi_0)\), \(\mathbb{E}\) is a Banach space, \(x_t(\theta)=x(t+\theta)\) for \(\theta\in I\), \(I=[-r,0]\) for some \(r>0\) or \(I=(-\infty,0]\), and \(X\) is a linear subspace of the linear space \(\text{Map}(I,\mathbb{E})\) of all not necessarily continuous maps from \(I\) to space \(\mathbb{E}\). The authors introduce retarded functional differential equations (RFDEs) with general delay structure. Then, they investigate the uniqueness of a maximal solution of problem \((1)\), and prove some theorems for the existence and uniqueness of solutions for \((1)\). The authors also give a characterization for the well-posedness of the initial value problem \((1)\) by using the solution semigroup \((S_0(t))_{t\geq 0}\) on \(X\) generated by the trivial RFDE \(\dot x=0\). Some applications of the main results to the RFDEs with infinite delay and to delay differential equations with time- and state-dependent delays are finally presented.