The converse Lyapunov's theorem for ODEs of Carathéodory type (Q651118)

The authors consider a Carathéodory ordinary differential equation \(\dot{x}=f(t,x)\), where the function \(f\) is Lebesgue measurable w.r.t time \(t\) and continuous (but not necessarily Lipschitz) w.r.t. state \(x\). They are interested in converse stability problems, i.e. what is the appropriate notion of stability and what are the weakest assumptions on \(f\) that imply the existence of a Lyapunov function. After a short but informative survey of existing results on converse Lyapunov stability, they prove that under the Osgood continuity condition (weaker than Lipschitz continuity), uniform stability of the origin implies the existence of a continuous Lyapunov function. This generalizes existing results stating that under the assumptions of measurability in \(t\) and Lipschitz continuity in \(x\), uniform stability implies existence of a locally Lipschitz continuous Lyapunov function.