Existence and uniqueness of positive solutions of a system of nonlinear algebraic equations (Q681548)

The authors study the nonlinear system \(\gamma_i(x_i)=\sum_{j=1}^mg_{ij}(x_j)\), where \(\gamma_i\) (\(i=1,\dotsc,m\)) are continuous real-valued functions on \([0,\infty)\) and \(g_{ij}:[0,\infty)\to[0,\infty)\) are continuous. They are looking for a positive solution \((x_1,\dotsc,x_m)\), i.e., an \(x\in\mathbb{R}^m\) with positive components. To this end, they assume that for \(i=1,\dots,m\) there exists a positive zero \(u_i^+\) of \(u_i\) such that \(\gamma_i\) is negative on \((0,u_i^*)\) and positive and strictly increasing on \((u_i^*,\infty)\). If, in addition, the \(g_{ij}\) are strictly increasing and if we have that \(\sum_{i=1}^mg_{ij}(u)<\gamma_i(u)\) for all sufficiently large \(u\), then we have that there is a positive solution. If one assumes, in addition, that either \(g_{ij}>0\) for all \(u>0\) or \(g_{ij}=0\) for all \(u\) and that in the first case all \(\gamma_j(u)/g_{ij}(u)\) are strictly monotone increasing on \([u_j^*,\infty)\), then the positive solution is unique. The proof uses a monotone iterative method.