On necessary and sufficient conditions for exponential stability in linear Volterra integro-differential equations (Q2567972)

The authors study the following integro-differential equation \[ X'(t)= AX(t)+ \int^t_0 K(t- s)X(s)\,ds,\quad t> 0,\quad X(0)= I. \] The question arises as to whether the integrability of the solution necessarily implies its exponential decay. The authors remove the sign restriction on the kernel and show that the following two assertions are equivalent: 1) There is \(\beta> 0\), \(c> 0\) such that \(|K(t)|\leq ce^{-\beta t}\), \(t\geq 0\); 2) There is \(\alpha> 0\), \(c_0> 0\) such that \(|X(t)|\leq c_0 e^{-\alpha t}\), \(|X'(t)|\leq c_0 e^{-\alpha t}\), \(|X''(t)|\leq c_0 e^{-\alpha t}\), \(t\geq 0\). The matrix-valued function \(K(t)\) is assumed to be continuous and obeys the following integrability condition \[ \int^\infty_0 t^2|K(t)|\,dt< \infty. \]