- Research Article
- Open Access
Sturm-Picone Comparison Theorem of Second-Order Linear Equations on Time Scales
- Chao Zhang1Email author and
- Shurong Sun1
https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/496135
© C. Zhang and S. Sun. 2009
- Received: 29 December 2008
- Accepted: 28 May 2009
- Published: 16 June 2009
Abstract
This paper studies Sturm-Picone comparison theorem of second-order linear equations on time scales. We first establish Picone identity on time scales and obtain our main result by using it. Also, our result unifies the existing ones of second-order differential and difference equations.
Keywords
- Nontrivial Solution
- Riccati Equation
- Product Rule
- Comparison Theorem
- Fundamental Result
1. Introduction
where
and
are real and rd-continuous functions in
Let
be a time scale,
be the forward jump operator in
,
be the delta derivative, and
.
First we briefly recall some existing results about differential and difference equations. As we well know, in 1909, Picone [1] established the following identity.
Picone Identity
By (1.4), one can easily obtain the Sturm comparison theorem of second-order linear differential equations (1.3).
Sturm-Picone Comparison Theorem
then
has at least one zero on





where
and
for
is the nabla derivative, and they get the Sturm comparison theorem. We will make use of Picone identity on time scales to prove the Sturm-Picone comparison theorem of (1.1) and (1.2).
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces some basic concepts and fundamental results about time scales, which will be used in Section 3. In Section 3 we first give the Picone identity on time scales, then we will employ this to prove our main result: Sturm-Picone comparison theorem of (1.1) and (1.2) on time scales.
2. Preliminaries
In this section, some basic concepts and some fundamental results on time scales are introduced.































Moreover, a function
defined on
is said to be rd-continuous if it is continuous at every right-dense point in
and its left-sided limit exists at every left-dense point in
.
For convenience, we introduce the following results ([11, Chapter 1], [12, Chapter 1], and [13, Lemma
]), which are useful in the paper.
Lemma 2.1.


- (i)
If
is differentiable at
, then
is continuous at
.
- (ii)
- (iii)
- (iv)
If
is rd-continuous on
, then it has an antiderivative on
.
Definition 2.2.


- (i)
in the case that
is right-scattered;
- (ii)
there is a neighborhood
of
such that
for all
with
in the case that
is right-dense.
If the inequalities for
are reversed in (i) and (ii),
is said to be right-decreasing at
.
The following result can be directly derived from (2.4).
Lemma 2.3.
Assume that
is differentiable at
If
then
is right-increasing at
; and if
, then
is right-decreasing at
.
Definition 2.4.
One says that a solution
of (1.1) has a generalized zero at
if
or, if
is right-scattered and
Especially, if
then we say
has a node at


The development of the theory uses similar arguments and the definition of the nabla derivative (see [10, Chapter 3]).
3. Main Results
In this section, we give and prove the main results of this paper.
can be rewritten as (1.1).
Theorem 3.1.
Proof.
where we used Lemma 2.1. This equation is in the form of (1.1) with
and
as desired.
Lemma 3.2 (Picone Identity).







Proof.


Combining
and
, we get (3.4). This completes the proof.
Now, we turn to proving the main result of this paper.
Theorem 3.3 (Sturm-Picone Comparison Theorem).




then
has at least one generalized zero on
Proof.
Suppose to the contrary,
has no generalized zeros on
and
for all
Case 1.




which is a contradiction. Therefore, in Case 1,
has at least one generalized zero on
Case 2.











which is a contradiction, too. Hence, in Case 2,
has at least one generalized zero on
.
Case 3.




which contradicts
It follows from the above discussion that
has at least one generalized zero on
This completes the proof.
Remark 3.4.
If
then Theorem 3.3 reduces to classical Sturm comparison theorem.
Remark 3.5.
In the continuous case:
. This result is the same as Sturm-Picone comparison theorem of second-order differential equations (see Section 1).
Remark 3.6.
In the discrete case:
. This result is the same as Sturm comparison theorem of second-order difference equations (see [8, Chapter 8]).
Example 3.7.
By Theorem 3.3, we have if
and
are the nontrivial solutions of (1.1) and (1.2),
are two consecutive generalized zeros of
and
then
has at least one generalized zero on
Obviously, the above three cases are not continuous and not discrete. So the existing results for the differential and difference equations are not available now.
By Remarks 3.4–3.6 and Example 3.7, the Sturm comparison theorem on time scales not only unifies the results in both the continuous and the discrete cases but also contains more complicated time scales.
Declarations
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Alberto Cabada (the editor) and the anonymous reviewer(s) for helpful comments and suggestions. This research was supported by the Natural Scientific Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant Y2007A27), (Grant Y2008A28), the Fund of Doctoral Program Research of University of Jinan (B0621), and the Natural Science Fund Project of Jinan University (XKY0704).
Authors’ Affiliations
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