Convexity with respect to a differential equation (Q819674)

The author studies the sets and the functions being convex on solutions of the second-order differential equation \(x''=G(t,x,x')\). The idea of convexity depends on replacing the line joining two points (which can be seen as the solution of the equation \(x''=0)\) by a class of continuous arcs being solutions of a second-order differential equation \(x''=G(t,x,x')\) joining those points. Moreover, the monotonicity concept with respect to a differential equation is also introduced and studied. As an application, the author obtains a sufficient optimality condition for an optimization problem.