Francesco Mainardi – författare

The purpose of this volume is to explore new bridges between different research areas involved in the theory and applications of the fractional calculus. In particular, it collects scientific and original contributions to the development of the theory of nonlocal and fractional operators. Special attention is given to the applications in mathematical physics, as well as in probability. Numerical methods aimed to the solution of problems with fractional differential equations are also treated in the book. The contributions have been presented during the international workshop "Nonlocal and Fractional Operators", held in Sapienza University of Rome, in April 2019, and dedicated to the retirement of Prof. Renato Spigler (University Roma Tre). Therefore we also wish to dedicate this volume to this occasion, in order to celebrate his scientific contributions in the field of numerical analysis and fractional calculus. The book is suitable for mathematicians, physicists andapplied scientists interested in the various aspects of fractional calculus.

The 2nd edition of this book is essentially an extended version of the 1st and provides a very sound overview of the most important special functions of Fractional Calculus. It has been updated with material from many recent papers and includes several surveys of important results known before the publication of the 1st edition, but not covered there.

As a result of researchers’ and scientists’ increasing interest in pure as well as applied mathematics in non-conventional models, particularly those using fractional calculus, Mittag-Leffler functions have caught the interest of the scientific community. Focusing on the theory of Mittag-Leffler functions, this volume offers a self-contained, comprehensive treatment, ranging from rather elementary matters to the latest research results. In addition to the theory the authors devote some sections of the work to applications, treating various situations and processes in viscoelasticity, physics, hydrodynamics, diffusion and wave phenomena, as well as stochastics. In particular, the Mittag-Leffler functions make it possible to describe phenomena in processes that progress or decay too slowly to be represented by classical functions like the exponential function and related special functions.

The book is intended for a broad audience, comprising graduate students, university instructors and scientists in the field of pure and applied mathematics, as well as researchers in applied sciences like mathematical physics, theoretical chemistry, bio-mathematics, control theory and several other related areas.