Construction of Lyapunov functions for a class of systems of nonlinear differential equations (Q2459765)

The authors of this paper consider the system \[ \dot {x}_s = \sum_{j = 1}^n {p_{sj} } f_j (x_j ), \quad s = 1, 2,\dots, n, \tag{1} \] where \(p_{sj} \) are constant coefficients, \[ p_{sj} \geq 0 \tag{2} \] for \(s \neq j\), \(s,\) \(j = 1, 2,\dots, n\); the functions \(f_j (x_j )\) are defined and continuous for all \(x_j \in ( - \infty ,\text{ }\infty )\) and have the properties \(x_j f_j (x_j ) > 0\) for \(x_j \neq 0\) and \(\int_0^{x_j } {f_j } (\tau)d\tau \to \infty \) as \(\left| {x_j } \right| \to \infty \). They derive some conditions for the existence of a Lyapunov function of the form \[ \widetilde {V} = \sum_{s = 1}^n {\lambda _s } \int_0^{x_s } {f_s^\mu } (\tau )\,d\tau \tag{3} \] for system (1), where \(\lambda _s \) are positive constants and \(\mu \) is a rational positive number with odd numerator and denominator. Namely, they prove a theorem on the subject: If the inequalities (2) are valid, then conditions \[ ( - 1)^k\det (p_{sj} )_{s,j = 1}^k > 0, \quad k = 1, 2,\dots, n, \] are necessary and sufficient for the existence of a Lyapunov function of the form (3) satisfying the assumptions of the Lyapunov asymptotic stability theorem for system (1).