A cardinal number connected to the solvability of systems of difference equations in a given function class (Q2474571)

A difference operator is a mapping \(D : {\mathbb{R}}^{\mathbb{R}} \to {\mathbb{R}}^{\mathbb{R}}\) of the form \[ (Df)(x) = \sum_{i=1}^n a_i f(x+b_i) \] where \(a_i, b_i\) are real numbers. A difference equation is a functional equation \(Df=g\), where \(D\) is a difference operator, \(g\) is a given function and \(f\) is the unknown. If \({\mathcal F}\) is a class of real functions, the solvability cardinal of \({\mathcal F}\) is the minimal cardinal sc(\({\mathcal F}\)) with the property that if every subsystem of size less than sc(\({\mathcal F}\)) of a system of difference equations has a solution in \({\mathcal F}\), then the whole system has a solution in \({\mathcal F}\). The authors obtain valuable results concerning the solvability cardinals. They determine the solvability cardinals of most usual function classes of functions: polynomials, trigonometric polynomials, continuous functions, Darboux functions, Borel, Lebesgue and Baire measurable functions. The paper is nicely written and represents a significant contribution to the theory of difference equations.