Global stability for separable nonlinear delay differential equations, (Q814056)

The author obtains sufficient conditions for global asymptotic stability of the zero solution of separable nonlinear delay differential equations of the form \[ y'(t)= -\sum^m_{i=0} a_i(t) g_i(y(\tau_i(t))),\;t\geq t_0,\;y(t) = \phi(t), \] where every \(a_i : [t_0, \infty) \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is continuous and bounded such that \[ a_i(t) \geq 0, \sum^m_{i=0} a_i (t) > 0, \int^\infty_{t_0}( \sum^m_{i=0}a_i (t))\,dt = \infty, \] \[ \tau_i : [t_0, \infty ) \rightarrow \mathbb{R} \] is piecewise continuous, \[ \tau_i(t) \leq t \text{ for } t \geq t_0, \sup_{t\geq t_0} \{t - \tau_i(t)\} \leq q < \infty, \] for \(0 \leq i \leq m\), \(\phi : [t_0 - q, t_0]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is continuous and bounded, \(g_i : \mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is continuous such that for \(x>0, g_i (-x) < g_i (0) = 0< g_i (x), 0 \leq m\), and there is a strictly monotone increasing function \(f : \mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) such that \[ f(0)=0,0 < \frac {g_i (x)} {f (x)} \leq 1,x \neq 0,0 \leq i \leq m \] and if \(f (x) \neq x, \lim_{x\rightarrow-\infty} f (x) {\text{ or}} \lim_{x\rightarrow\infty} f (x)\) is finite. Explicit conditions are provided for a wide class of \(f\) which includes the case \(f (x) = e^x -1\). These results are applied to nonautonomous logistic equations with delays.