Riccati inequality and functional properties of differential operators on the half line (Q2496739)

The authors investigate the existence and uniqueness of the solutions of the problem \[ \dot u+Au=f, \qquad P_{1}u(0)= \xi, \] for \(A:\overline{\mathbb{R}}_{+} \rightarrow \mathcal{L}(\mathbb {C}^{N})\) piecewise continuous and \(P_{1}\) a projection on a subspace \(X_{1}\) of \(\mathbb{C}^{N}\). They do not assume the existence of any exponential dichotomy for the equation \(\dot u+Au=0\). Instead of this, they prove that the Fredholmness and injectivity properties of the problem are controlled by a Riccati differential inequality of the form \[ HA+A^{\star}H-\dot H \geq \nu(A^{\star}A+H^{2}) \tag{1} \] with \(\nu> 0\) and \(H\) Hermitian. More precisely, let \(W_{A}^{1,2}\) be the Hilbert space of distributions \(u\) on \(\mathbb{R}_{+}\) such that \(\dot u \in L^{2}\) and \(AU\in L^{2}\). One defines the operators \(D_{A}:W_{A}^{1,2} \rightarrow L^{2}\), \(D_{A}u=\dot u+Au\), \(\Lambda_{A,P_{1}}:W_{A}^{1,2} \rightarrow L^{2}\times X_{1}\), \(\Lambda_{A,P_{1}}u=(D_{A}u, P_{1}u(0))\) and proves that if there exists a positive constant \(\nu\) and a Hermitian-valued locally Lipschitz continuous function \(H\) defined on \(\overline{\mathbb{R}}_{+}\) such that (1) holds, then \(D_{A}\) is surjective, has finite-dimensional kernel and \(\Lambda_{A,P_{1}}\) is Fredholm. Its Fredholm index is computed. Additional conditions which ensures that \(\Lambda_{A,P_{1}}\) is injective or surjective are given, too.