Nonordered discontinuous upper and lower solutions for first-order ordinary differential equations (Q5946004)

The author studies the first-order equations \[ x'(t)=f(t,x(t)), \text{ for a. e. } t \in I=[0,1], \quad x(0)=x_0, \] and \[ x'(t)=f(t,x(t)), \text{ for a. e. } t \in I=[0,1], \quad x(1)=y_0, \] where \(f:I\times \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}\) is a Carathéodory function. He proves that if there exist \(\alpha \in BV^-(I)\) and \(\beta \in BV^+(I)\) such that \(\alpha'(t) \leq f(t,\alpha(t))\) and \(\beta'(t) \geq f(t,\beta(t))\) for a. e. \(t \in I\) then such problems have extremal solutions in \([m,M]\) for all \(x_0 \in[\alpha(0),\beta(0)]\) and \(y_0 \in[\beta(1),\alpha(1)]\). Here, \(m(t) = \min{\{\alpha(t) ,\beta(t)\}}\), \(M(t) = \max{\{\alpha(t) ,\beta(t)\}}\) for all \(t \in I\), and \(BV^+(I)\) (\(BV^-(I)\)) denotes the set of functions of bounded variation in \(I\) with nondecreasing (nonincreasing) singular part. Moreover, if \(\alpha(0) \leq \beta(0)\) and \(\alpha(1) \geq \beta(1)\) then, for every \(x_0 \in [\alpha(0), \beta(0)]\) and \(y_0 \in [\beta(1), \alpha(1)] \), the problem \( x'(t)=f(t,x(t))\) for a.e. \(t \in I=[0,1]\), \(x(0)=x_0\), \(x(1)=y_0 \), has extremal solutions in \([m,M]\). These results are extended to the discontinuous problem \( x'(t)= q(x(t)) f(t,x(t)) \), with \(f\) a Carathéodory function and \(q:\mathbb{R}\to (0,+\infty)\) such that \(q\), \(1/q \in L_{\text{loc}}^{\infty}(\mathbb{R})\). Finally, some examples of functions \(f\) that do not satisfy the Carathéodory conditions and for which there is no solution in \([m,M]\) are presented in the paper.