A sufficient condition for dichotomy based on a suitable invariance property (Q635426)

A dichotomy is studied for the linear homogeneous differential system \[ \dot x(t)=A(t)x(t),\quad t\in J\subset\mathbb R, \tag{1} \] where \(x\in\mathbb R^n\), \(A(t)\) is a continuous matrix function. In the literature, some criteria for dichotomy are available. These mainly depend on conditions which involve the boundedness of the matrix \(A\) and various formulations of diagonal dominance. The paper suggests another criterion for dichotomy. This is based on a dichotomic cone invariance property: there exist two disjoint cones such that the forward (backward) flow of system (1) originating from a plane that lies in the first (second) cone remains in the cone itself. It should be mentioned that this property can be verified even if the system-matrix is not diagonally dominant. It is shown that dichotomic cone invariance implies dichotomy for system (1). Thus, the paper presents conditions for dichotomy which are not related to diagonal dominance and can be applied to cases in which some of the classical hypotheses do not hold.