Pietro Zecca - Böcker

The theory of set-valued maps and of differential inclusion is developed in recent years both as a field of his own and as an approach to control theory. The book deals with the theory of semilinear differential inclusions in infinite dimensional spaces. In this setting, problems of interest to applications do not suppose neither convexity of the map or compactness of the multi-operators. These assumption implies the development of the theory of measure of noncompactness and the construction of a degree theory for condensing mapping. Of particular interest is the approach to the case when the linear part is a generator of a condensing, strongly continuous semigroup. In this context, the existence of solutions for the Cauchy and periodic problems are proved as well as the topological properties of the solution sets. Examples of applications to the control of transmission line and to hybrid systems are presented.

The C.I.M.E. session on Dynamical Systems, held in Cetraro (Italy), June 19-26, 2000, focused on the latest developments in several important areas in dynamical systems, with full development and historical context. The lectures of Chow and Mallet-Paret focus on the area of lattice differential systems, the lectures of Conto and Galleotti treat the classical problem of classification of orbits for two-dimensional autonomous systems with polynomial right sides, the lectures of Nussbaum focus on applications of fixed point theorems to the problem of limiting profiles for the solutions of singular perturbations of delay differential equations, and the lectures of Johnson and Mantellini deal with the existence of periodic and quasi-periodic orbits to non-autonomous systems. The volume will be of interest to researchers and graduate students working in these areas.

This volume contains the texts of four courses given by the authors at a summer school that sought to present the growing field of topological methods in the theory of ordinary differential equations (in finite and infinite dimension), and to provide a forum for discussion of the wide variety of mathematical tools which are involved. The topics covered range from the extensions of the Lefschetz fixed point and the fixed point index on ANRs, to the theory of parity of one-parameter families of Fredholm operators, and from the theory of coincidence degree for mappings on Banach spaces to homotopy methods for continuation principles.