Existence and uniqueness of solutions to a coupled system of implicit fractional differential equations


John R. Graef, Abdelghani Ouahab




Using Perov's fixed point theorem, the authors establish the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the coupled system of implicit fractional differential equations \[ \begin{cases} {}^{c}\!D^{lpha}x(t) = f_{1}(t,x(t),y(t), {}^{c}\!D^{lpha}x(t)), & tı J, {}^{c}\!D^{\beta}y(t) = f_{2}(t,x(t),y(t), {}^{c}D\!^{\beta}y(t)), & tı J, x(0) = L_1[x], \quad x'(0) = L_2[x], y(0) = L_3[y], \quad y'(0) = L_4[y], \end{cases} \] where $\alpha,\beta \in [1,2)$, $J=[0,1]$, ${}^{c}\!D^{\alpha}$ and ${}^{c}\!D^{\beta}$ are Caputo fractional derivatives, $f_{i}: [0,1]\times\mathbb{R}^3 \to \mathbb{R}$ are continuous functions for $i=1, 2$, and the functionals $L_{j}$, $ j=1,2,3,4$, are Stieltjes integrals. A second existence result is obtained by using a vector version of a fixed point theorem for a sum of two operators due to Krasnosel'skii. There is also a study of the structure of the set of solutions to the problem. Examples illustrate the results.