On the equality problem of generalized Bajraktarević means (Q785644)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the equality problem of generalized Bajraktarević means, i.e., to solve the functional equation \[ f^{(-1)}\left(\frac{p_1 (x_1 )f (x_1 ) + \cdots + p_n (x_n )f (x_n )}{p_1 (x_1 ) + \cdots + p_n (x_n )}\right)=g^{(-1)}\left(\frac{q_1 (x_1 )g(x_1 ) + \cdots + q_n (x_n )g(x_n )}{q_1 (x_1 ) + \cdots + q_n (x_n )}\right), \tag{\(\ast\)} \] which holds for all \((x_1 , \ldots , x_n ) \in I^{n}\), where \(n \geq 2\), \(I\) is a nonempty open real interval, the unknown functions \(f, g \colon I \to \mathbb{R}\) are strictly monotone, \(f^{ (-1)}\) and \(g^{(-1)}\) denote their generalized left inverses, respectively, and \(p = (p_1 , \ldots, p_n ) \colon I \to \mathbb{R}^{n}_{+}\) and \(q = (q_1 , \ldots, q_n )\colon I \to \mathbb{R}^{n}_{+}\) are also unknown functions. According to the main results of the paper, in the nonsymmetric two-variable case, assuming the three times differentiability of \(f , g\) and the existence of \(i \in \left\{1, 2\right\}\) such that either \(p_i\) is twice continuously differentiable and \(p_{3-i}\) is continuous on \(I\), or \(p_{i}\) is twice differentiable and \(p_{3-i}\) is once differentiable on \(I\), it is proven that \((\ast)\) holds if and only if there exist four constants \(a, b, c, d \in \mathbb{R}\) with \(ad = bc\) such that \[ cf + d > 0, \quad g= \frac{af + b}{cf + d}\text{ and }q_{l} = (cf + d)p_{l}\quad (l \in \left\{1, \ldots, n\right\}). \] Furthermore, if \(n \geq 3\), the same conclusion with weaker regularity assumptions is obtained. Namely, if \(f\) and \(g\) are three times differentiable, \(p\) is continuous and there exist \(i, j, k \in \left\{1, \ldots, n\right\}\) with \(i \neq j \neq k \neq i\) such that \(p_i , p_j , p_k\) are differentiable.