Differential inclusions and monotoncicity conditions for nonsmooth Lyapunov functions (Q5926379)

The authors study the differential inclusion \(x'\in F(x)\), \(x\in\mathbb{R}^n\), \(x(0)= x_0\in \mathbb{R}^n\), where \(F\) is a set-valued map defined in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) with compact values, together with a function \(F: \mathbb{R}^n\to \mathbb{R}\) such that either \(F\) is locally Lipschitz continuous (in the Hausdorff sense) and \(V\) is lower-semicontinuous or \(F\) is continuous and \(V\) is locally Lipschitzian. They characterize (in terms of equivalent conditions concerning the infinitesimal behavior of \(V\)) the (weak) decrease of the function \(I\ni t\mapsto V(\phi(t))\) for each \(x_0\) and each (local) solution \(\phi: I\to \mathbb{R}^n\) to the initial differential inclusion. These conditions involve (instead of the gradient of \(V\) in case \(V\) is smooth) either the proximal subdifferential and the contingent derivative of \(V\) or the Clarke generalized gradient, respectively.