Abstract
Purpose
The paper deals with the existence of positive solutions for a coupled system of nonlinear fractional differential equations with p-Laplacian operator and involving both right Riemann–Liouville and left Caputo-type fractional derivatives. The existence results are obtained by the help of Guo–Krasnosel'skii fixed-point theorem on a cone in the sublinear case. In addition, an example is included to illustrate the main results.
Design/methodology/approach
Fixed-point theorems.
Findings
No finding.
Originality/value
The obtained results are original.
Keywords
Citation
Ramdane, S. and Guezane-Lakoud, A. (2021), "Existence of positive solutions for p-Laplacian systems involving left and right fractional derivatives", Arab Journal of Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 235-248. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJMS-10-2020-0086
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Samira Ramdane and Assia Guezane-Lakoud
License
Published in Arab Journal of Mathematical Sciences. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
1. Introduction
In this paper, we consider the following coupled system of nonlinear fractional differential equations with p-Laplacian operator:
Fractional differential equations arise in many engineering and scientific disciplines as the mathematical modeling of systems and processes in the fields of physics, chemistry, aerodynamics, electrodynamics of a complex medium, polymer rheology, etc. Fractional differential equations also serve as an excellent tool for the description of hereditary properties of various materials and processes. For the basic theory and recent development of subject, see [1, 2, 3]. Recently, a linear boundary value problem involving both the right Caputo and the left Riemann–Liouville fractional derivatives have been studied by many authors [4, 5] Many people pay attention to the existence and multiplicity of solutions or positive solutions for boundary value problems of nonlinear fractional differential equations by means of some fixed-point theorems [6–13].
In [14], by applying Guo–Krasnosel'skiî's fixed-point theorem, Guezane-Lakoud and Ashyralyev discussed the existence of positive solutions for the following fractional BVP
On the other hand, the study of coupled systems involving fractional differential equations is also important as such systems occur in various problems, see [13, 15, 16] and the references therein.
In the interesting paper [17], Liu studied by the help of Picard iterative method and Schaefer's fixed-point theorem, the existence of solutions for four classes of boundary value problems for impulsive fractional differential equations.
In [12], relying on the Guo–Krasnosel'skiî's fixed-point theorem, Li and Wei discussed existence of positive solutions for the following coupled system of mixed higher-order nonlinear singular fractional differential equations with integral boundary conditions
On the other hand, differential equations with p-Laplacian operator have been widely studied owing to its importance in theory and application of mathematics and physics, such in non-Newtonian mechanics, nonlinear elasticity and glaciology, population biology, nonlinear flow laws. There are a very large number of papers devoted to the existence of solutions of the p-Laplacian operator, see for example [18–25].
In [26] G. Q. Chai, studied the existence of positive solutions for the boundary-value problem of nonlinear fractional differential equations with p-Laplacian operator
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we present preliminaries and lemmas. Section 3, we investigate the existence of a solution for the corresponding fractional linear boundary value problem. Finally, Section 4 is devoted to the existence of positive solutions under some sufficient conditions on the nonlinear terms, then we give an example to illustrate our results.
2. Preliminaries
In this section, we recall the basic definitions and lemmas from fractional calculus theory, see [2, 3], for more details.
Let
The right Riemann–Liouville fractional derivative and the left Caputo fractional derivative of order
For the properties of Riemann–Liouville fractional derivative and Caputo fractional derivative, we obtain the following statement. Let
We also need the following lemma and theorem to obtain our results.
[26] Let
(1)if
then(2)if
then
[27] (Guo–Krasnoselskiî's) Let E be a Banach space, and let
(1)
, and or(2)
and
Then T has a fixed point in
3. Linear boundary value problem
Assume that
is given by
Proof. We apply (2.2) to equation (3.1) to get
thanks to boundary condition (3.2) we obtain
So, the unique solution of the problem (3.1) is
The proof is completed.▪
If
Proof. From Eqs (3.6) and (2.1), we have
By the boundary conditions (3.7) we get
and then
Thus, the fractional boundary value problem (3.1)–(3.2) is equivalent to the following problem
Lemma 3.1 implies that the problem (3.6), (3.7) and (3.8) has an unique solution
the proof is achieved.▪
The functions
for for .
Proof. (1) Observing the expression of
(2)First,
for
Second, setting
for given
and
4. Existence of positive solutions
We need to introduce some notations for the forthcoming discussion. Let
Define the cone
Let us introduce the following notations
By simple calculation, we get
We make the following assumption:
(H): There exist two nonnegative functions
The system
Proof. Easily obtained by Lemma 3.2, then we omit it.▪
Define the operator
Then, by Lemma 4.1, the existence of solutions for problem
Let
Proof. First, we shall show that
Taking the supremum over
On the other side, we have
Since
That is
Second, we shall proof that T is completely continuous that will be done in two steps.
Step 1: By the continuity of the functions
and it yields for
(1)If
then from Lemma 2.1
Then,
Hence
(2)If
then from Lemma 2.1, we have
So,
Hence
From (4.5)–(4.6) it follows that
Step 2: The operator T is uniformly bounded on
Let be an open bounded set in P. Set
Then for
Now we prove that
Consequently,
Assume that the condition
Proof. From
Let
Hence
Since
Let
By Guo–Krasnosel'skii fixed-point theorem, we conclude that T has a fixed point
Consider the system
So, the assumption
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Further reading
[28]Agrawal OP. Formulation of Euler–Lagrange equations for fractional variational problems. J Math Anal Appl. 2002; 272: 368-79.
[29]Guezane-Lakoud A, Khaldi R, Torres DFM. On a fractional oscillator equation with natural boundary conditions. Prog Frac Diff Appl. 2017; 3: 191-7.
[30]Podlubny I. Geometric and physical interpretation of fractional integration and fractional differentiation. Fract Calc Appl, Anal. 2002; 5: 367-86.
[31]Samko SG, Kilbas AA, Marichev OI. Fractional integrals and derivatives: theory and applications. Yverdon: Gordon and Breach; 1993.
[32]Xie S. Positive solutions for a system of higher-order singular nonlinear fractional differential equations with nonlocal boundary conditions. E. J. Qualitative Theory of Diff Equa. 2015; (18): 1-17.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the quality of the paper.