Monotone semiflows in scalar non-quasi-monotone functional differential equations (Q2640037)

The authors define a new partial ordering which is preserved, under appropriate conditions, by the semiflow associated with the functional differential equation \((*)\quad x'(t)=f(x_ t),\) where f: \(C\to {\mathbb{R}}\) is continuous and \(C=C([-\tau,0),{\mathbb{R}}),\tau >0\), with the sup norm. They note that C is not strongly ordered by this new partial ordering but the dense subspace of C consisting of the functions satisfying a Lipschitz condition is strongly ordered. They show, under appropriate conditions, that the semiflow generated by (*) is strongly ordered preserving on C with respect to the new partial ordering. Consequently most orbits converge to an equilibrium. The present work depends heavily on an earlier work of the authors (Quasiconvergence and stability for strongly order preserving semiflows, SIAM J. Math. Anal., to appear).