Integral equations on time scales (Q311354)

Recent developments in the theory of integral equations on time scales are presented. The motivation behind the theory of time scales is to unify discrete and continuous analysis and thus one defines a time scale to be a closed subset of the real numbers. For functions defined on a time scale one can introduce a derivative that generalizes ordinary derivatives and forward differences and an integral that generalizes ordinary integrals and sums. Having defined and explored these concepts in the time scale setting, the author proceeds to study linear Volterra integral and integro-differential equations as well as Fredholm integral equations. For all these equations the kernels are mostly taken to be continuous which simplifies the analysis and restricts the results. The approach chosen by the author to find a solution is in most cases to use iteration or the Adomian decomposition method. For Fredholm equations the operator theoretic results concerning eigenvalues etc. do, of course, resemble the ones for the continuous case. A very large number of examples is solved but general questions about for example the asymptotic behavior of the solutions are not considered. One reason for this is that the concept of convolution does not fit very well into the time scale setting and only some very special equations of this kind are studied. The author spends a considerable effort on obtaining the appropriate concept of exponential functions and Laplace transforms in the time scale setting and this makes it possible to generalize at least the basic results from classical analysis of differential and Volterra integral equations using Laplace transforms. The book contains a very short chapter on nonlinear Volterra equations and an index with about 100 entries.