A nonsmooth Lyapunov function and stability for ODE's of Carathéodory type (Q929662)

This paper provides a contribution to the Lyapunov method for investigating stability of systems of ODE's of the form \(\dot x= f(t,x)\). The function \(f(t, x)\) satisfies some technical assumptions, which imply in particular that \(f(t, x)\) is continuous with respect to \(x\). However, \(f(t, x)\) may be discontinuous with respect to \(t\). There are examples of stable systems for which a \(C^1\)-Lyapunov function is difficult to find. The authors prove that if there is a locally Lipschitz continuous Lyapunov function \(V\) for which the condition \(\dot V\leq 0\) is satisfied almost everywhere, then \(V\) is nonincreasing along all the solutions. The main trick of the proof is a convolution smoothing procedure. Some results about stability, uniform stability, asymptotic stability of an equilibrium position follow.