1. Introduction
In the past two decades, fractional differential equations are widely used in the mathematical modeling of real-world phenomena. These applications have motivated many researchers in the field of differential equations to investigate fractional differential equations with different fractional derivatives, see the monographs [
1,
2,
3,
4] and the recent references.
The main motivation of studying fractional evolution equation comes from two aspects. Firstly, many mathematical models in physics and fluid mechanics are characterized by fractional partial differential equations. Secondly, many types of fractional partial differential equations, such as fractional diffusion equations, wave equations, Navier–Stokes equations, Rayleigh–Stokes equations, Fokker–Planck equations, Schrödinger equations, and so on, can be abstracted as fractional evolution equations, for example, see [
5,
6,
7]. Therefore, the study of fractional evolution equations is very valuable in both theory and application. Indeed, the well-posedness of fractional evolution equations has become an important research topic of evolution equations (see [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18]).
In this paper, we consider the Cauchy problem of fractional evolution equations with an almost sectorial operator
      
      where 
 is the Hilfer fractional derivative of order 
 and type 
, 
 is Riemann–Liouville fractional integral of order 
, 
A is an almost sectorial operator in Banach space 
X, 
 is a function to be defined later, 
.
The Hilfer fractional derivative is a natural generalization of Riemann–Liouville derivative and Caputo derivative, see [
1]. It is obvious that fractional differential equations with Hilfer derivatives include fractional differential equations with Riemann–Liouville derivative or Caputo derivative as special cases. In the past few years, fractional differential equations with Hilfer fractional derivative received great attention from many researchers (see [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18]).
In this paper, we will prove new existence theorems of mild solutions for (
1) in the cases that the semigroup associated with the almost sectorial operator is compact as well as noncompact. In particular, our results obtained in this paper essentially improve and extend the known results in [
4,
9,
10]. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: in 
Section 2, we will introduce almost sectorial operators, fractional calculus and the measure of noncompactness which will be used in this paper. In 
Section 3, we will give some useful lemmas before proving the main results. In 
Section 4, we will show some new existence results of mild solutions for Cauchy problem (
1). In 
Section 5, we will point out that the definitions of the operators in [
10,
16,
17,
18] are inappropriate.
  2. Preliminaries
We first introduce some notations and definitions about almost sectorial operators, fractional calculus and the Kuratowski’s measure of noncompactness. For more details, we refer to [
1,
2,
19,
20].
Assume that X is a Banach space with the norm . Let ,  and J be a finite interval of . By  we denote the Banach space of all continuous functions from J to X with the norm . We denote by  the space of all bounded linear operators from X to X with the usual operator norm .
Let A be a linear operator from X to itself. Denote by  the domain of A, by  its spectrum, while  is the resolvent set of A. Let  be the open sector for , and  be its closure, i.e., .
Definition 1. Let  and . We denote  as a family of all closed linear operators  such that
- (i) 
-  and 
- (ii) 
- for any , there exists  such that 
where  is the resolvent operator of A. The linear operator A will be called an almost sectorial operator on X if .  Define the power of 
A as
      
      where 
 is an appropriate path oriented counterclockwise and 
. Then, the linear power space 
 can be defined and 
 is a Banach space with the graph norm 
, 
.
Next, let us introduce the semigroup associated with 
A. We denote the semigroup associated with 
A by 
. For 
      where the integral contour 
 is oriented counter-clockwise and 
, forms an analytic semigroup of growth order 
.
Lemma 1 (see [
19]). 
Assume that  and . Set . Then- (i)
- , for any ; 
- (ii)
- there exists a constant  such that , for any ; 
- (iii)
- The range  of ,  is contained in . Particularly,  for all  with ,and hence there exists a constant  such that 
- (iv)
- If , then ; 
- (v)
- , for every  with . 
 Definition 2 (Riemann-Liouville fractional integral, see [
2]). 
The fractional integral of order λ for a function  is defined asprovided the right side is point-wise defined on , where  is the gamma function. Definition 3 (Hilfer fractional derivative, see [
1]). 
Let  and . The Hilfer fractional derivative of order λ and type ν for a function  is defined as In particular, when 
, 
, then
      
      where 
 is Riemann–Liouville derivative.
If 
, 
, then
      
      where 
 is Caputo derivative.
Let 
D be a nonempty subset of 
X. The Kuratowski’s measure of noncompactness 
 is defined as follows:
      where the diameter of 
 is given by diam 
, 
Lemma 2 ([
21]). 
Let X be a Banach space, and let  be a continuous function family. If there exists  such thatThen  is integrable on , and  Definition 4 ([
22]). 
Define the wright function  bywith the following property Lemma 3 ([
9]). 
The problem (1) is equivalent to the integral equation Lemma 4. Assume that  satisfies integral Equation (2). Thenwhere  Proof.  This proof is similar to [
9], so we omit it.   □
 In view of Lemma 4, we have the following definition.
Definition 5. If  satisfiesthen  is called a mild solution of the Cauchy problem (1).  Lemma 5 ([
10]). 
If  is a compact operator, then  and  are also compact operators. Lemma 6 ([
4]). 
Let . For all , we have  Lemma 7. Assume that  is a compact operator. Then  is equicontinuous.
 Lemma 8 (See also [
10]). 
For any fixed , ,  and  are linear operators, and for any ,where Proof.  Moreover, for 
 and 
,
        
        and
        
This completes the proof.    □
 Lemma 9 ([
10]). 
Assume that  is equicontinuous. Then ,  and  are strongly continuous, that is, for any  and ,   3. Some Lemmas
Throughout this paper, we assume that ,  and . Furthermore, we suppose that  with .
We introduce the following hypotheses:
- (H1)
-  is continuous in the uniform operator topology for , i.e.,  is equicontinuous. 
- (H2)
- the map  is measurable for all  and the map  is continuous for a.e. . 
- (H3)
- there exists a function  -  satisfying
           - 
          and  - , for a.e.  -  and any  - . 
- (H4)
- there exists a constant  -  such that
           - 
          where
           
Then 
 is a Banach space (see Lemma 3.2 of [
23]).
For any 
, define an operator 
 as follows
      
      where
      
Clearly, the problem (
1) has a mild solution 
 if and only if 
 has a fixed point 
.
By lemma 6, 
 and 
 exists, so (
3) holds.
In addition, from Lemma 8 and (H3), we have
      
For any 
, set
      
Clearly, 
. Define an operator 
 as follows
      
      where
      
Clearly,  and  are nonempty, convex and closed subsets of  and , respectively.
Before giving the main results, we first prove the following lemmas.
Lemma 10. Assume that (H1)–(H4) hold. Then, the set  is equicontinuous.
 Proof.  Step I. We first prove that  is equicontinuous.
For 
, 
, by (
3), we obtain
        
For any 
 and 
, we have
        
Hence,  is equicontinuous.
Step II. We prove that  is equicontinuous.
Let , for any , . Then .
For 
, 
, by (
4), we have
        
For 
, we get
        
        where
        
One can deduce that 
, since 
. Noting that
        
        then by Lebesgue dominated convergence theorem, we have
        
        which implies 
 as 
.
By (H3), for 
, we have
        
        where
        
By (H1) and Lemma 9, it is easy to see that  as . Similar to the proof that ,  tend to zero, we get  and  as . Thus,  tends to zero as . Clearly,  as .
Therefore,  is equicontinuous. Furthermore,  is equicontinuous.    □
 Lemma 11. Assume that (H2)–(H4) hold. Then .
 Proof.  Let , for , . Then .
From Lemmas 10, we know that 
. For 
 and any 
, by (H4), we have
        
For , we have . Therefore, .    □
 Lemma 12. Assume that (H2)–(H4) hold. Then  is continuous.
 Proof.  Let 
 be a sequence in 
 which is convergent to 
. Consequently,
        
Let 
, 
, 
. Then 
. In view of (H2), we have
        
For each 
, 
. By Lebesgue dominated convergence theorem, we obtain
        
Thus, for 
,
        
Therefore,  as . Hence,  is continuous. The proof is completed.    □
   4. Main Results
Theorem 1. Assume that  is compact. Furthermore suppose that (H2)–(H4) hold. Then the Cauchy problem (1) has at least one mild solution in .  Proof.  Clearly, the problem (
1) exists a mild solution 
 if and only if the operator 
 has a fixed point 
, where 
. Hence, we only need to prove that the operator 
 has a fixed point in 
. From Lemmas 11 and 12, we know that 
 and 
 is continuous. In view of Lemma 10, the set 
 is equicontinuous. It remains to prove that for 
, 
 is relatively compact in 
X. Clearly, 
 is relatively compact in 
X. We only consider the case 
. For any 
 and 
, define 
 on 
 as follows
        
By Lemma 5, we know that 
 is compact because 
 is compact for 
. Furthermore, 
 is compact, then the set 
 is relatively compact in 
X for any 
 and for any 
. Moreover, for every 
, we find
        
Therefore, 
 is also a relatively compact set in 
X for 
. Thus, 
 is relatively compact by Ascoli–Arzela Theorem. Hence, 
 is a completely continuous operator. Schauder’s fixed point theorem shows that 
 has at least a fixed point 
. Let 
. Thus,
        
        which implies that 
 is a mild solution of (
1) in 
. The proof is completed.    □
 In the case that  is noncompact for , we give an assumption as follows:
- (H5)
- there exists a constant  -  such that for any bounded  - ,
           - 
          where  -  is the Kuratowski’s measure of noncompactness. 
Theorem 2. Assume that (H1)–(H5) hold. Then the Cauchy problem (1) has at least one mild solution in .  Proof.  Let  for all  and , . By Lemma 11, , for . Consider set , and we will prove set  is relatively compact. In view of Lemmas 10, the set  is equicontinuous. We only need to prove  is relatively compact in X for .
By the properties of measure of noncompactness, for any 
 we have
        
Let 
, 
, 
. By the condition (H5) and Lemma 2, we have
        
In view of (
5), we obtain
        
Therefore, by the inequality in ([
24], p.188), we obtain that 
, then 
 is relatively compact. Consequently, it follows from Ascoli–Arzela Theorem that set 
 is relatively compact, i.e., there exists a convergent subsequence of 
. With no confusion, let 
.
Thus, by continuity of the operator 
, we have
        
Let 
. Thus, 
 is a mild solution of (
1) in 
. The proof is completed.    □
 In the following, we prove the existence and uniqueness of a mild solution of the Cauchy problem (
1).
- (H6)
- There exists a function  -  such that  - ,
           - 
          and
           
Theorem 3. Assume that the conditions (H2)–(H4) and (H6) hold. Then the Cauchy problem (1) has a unique mild solution in .  Proof.  From Lemmas 11, we know that 
. For any 
, 
, we have
        
Thus
        
        which implies that 
 is a contraction mapping. In view of the contraction mapping principle, 
 has the unique fixed point 
. Let 
. Thus, 
 is a unique mild solution of (
1) in 
. The proof is completed.    □
   5. Remarks
In recent paper [
10], the authors studied the problem (
1) and obtained the following result by Schauder’s fixed point theorem.
Theorem 4 (see Theorem 3 in [
10]). 
Let ,  and . If we assume,  is compact and the following hypotheses hold:- (h)
- for each fixed ,  is continuous function and for each ,  is strongly measurable. 
- (h)
- there exists a function  satisfyingand  for all  and almost all . 
- (h)
- for a constant  and , where . 
Then there exist a mild solution of the Cauchy problem (1) in  for every  with .  Remark 1. In [10], the authors claimed that  (see, (12) in [10]). However, this claim is incorrect. In fact, when  and , from Lemma 6, we know that . Furthermore, we have Therefore, the definition of the operator  in (14) of [10] is incorrect. Because there is the same shortcoming in the papers [16,17,18], the definitions of the operator  in [16], the operator Φ in the proof of Theorem 3.1 in [17] and the operator  in the proof of Theorem 3 in [18] are inappropriate.  Remark 2. The condition (h) contains the abstract operator . It is difficult to verify whether the condition (h) is satisfied for one fractional evolution equation.
 Remark 3. The results obtained in this paper essentially improve and correct Theorem 3 in [10], and extend Theorem 2.1 in [4] and the known results in [9]. It is worth mentioning that all conditions of our theorems do not contain the abstract operator .  
   
  
    Author Contributions
Conceptualization, M.Z. and Y.Z.; formal analysis, M.Z. and C.L.; investigation, M.Z. and Y.Z.; writing—review and editing, C.L. and Y.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12071396).
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
No data was reported in this study.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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