1. Introduction
In the current paper, we introduce the following class of differential variational inequalities (DVIs) governed by a variational inequality and an evolution equation formulated in infinite-dimensional spaces:
where
denotes the solution set of the following variational inequality (VI):
find such thatFurther, consider
and
as real infinite-dimensional Banach spaces,
is a nonempty closed and convex subset,
is the infinitesimal generator of a
-semigroup
in
,
is a convex, lower semicontinuous,
functional,
is a bounded linear operator,
is a set-valued mapping,
, and
are given, which will be specified in
Section 2.
In accordance with Pang and Stewart [
1], Pazy [
2] and Liu et al. [
3], the solutions of evolutionary problem (DVI) are understood in the following mild sense:
Definition 1. A pair of functions , with and measurable, is said to be a mild solution of evolutionary problem (DVI) ifwhere and , a.e. . As is well-known, differential variational inequalities were introduced as a powerful mathematical tool of variational analysis in order to investigate real-life problems coming from operations research, engineering, and physical sciences. Various aspects related to differential variational inequalities have been investigated so far, but in a finite-dimensional framework (see, for instance, [
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13] and references therein). The results established in Gwinner [
6,
7], Liu et al. [
10], Pang and Stewart [
1], Li et al. [
14] are devoted to the case
and
. Recently, the theory of differential variational inequalities was extended to the more general level of infinite-dimensional Banach or Hilbert spaces. The paper by Liu et al. [
15] was devoted to discuss the well-posedness and the generalized well-posedness of a differential mixed quasi-variational inequality and to provide criteria of well-posedness in the generalized sense of the inequality. For solving the problems or phenomena described by nonconvex superpotential functions, which are locally Lipschitz, Cen et al. [
16] extended the results derived in Liu et al. [
15]. Migórski and Bai [
17] studied a class of evolution subdifferential inclusions involving history-dependent operators. Regarding the evolutionary problem (DVI), references Liu et al. [
3,
18] could be seen as the most appropriate regarding the subject and the mathematical development presented in this paper. Reference Liu et al. [
3] considers
and
having the general form
and
, respectively. By considering the particular form
for
is essential in the present paper since it allows us to use the Browder’s theorem (see Theorem 1). On the other hand, the reference Liu et al. [
18] does not contain the functional
in the considered evolutionary problem. Thus, the evolutionary problem (DVI) becomes more general in this direction and incorporates various classes of problems and models.
In this paper, based on the Browder’s theorem, optimal control theory, KKM theorem, measurability of set-valued mappings and the theory of semigroups, we study the existence of solutions associated with DVI in separable reflexive Banach spaces of infinite dimension. First, we prove important properties associated with the solution set of DVI as the strongly-weakly upper semicontinuity, superpositionally measurability, compactness and convexity. Further, we formulate and prove the main result established that the solution set for DVI is nonempty and compact. Additionally, the theoretical developments presented in this paper are accompanied by an application to differential Nash games. As is well known (see, for instance, Chen and Wang [
4], Gwinner [
6,
7], Han and Pang [
8], Li et al. [
14], Liu et al. [
10], Pang and Stewart [
1], Wang and Huang [
13]), this kind of evolutionary problem governed by variational inequalities includes various situations such as Coulomb friction problems for contacting bodies, dynamic traffic network, economical dynamics, electrical circuits with ideal diodes, control systems etc.
The paper is divided as follows. The first part of
Section 2 includes basic definitions and results used further. Next, we establish a general existence result for a class of variational inequalities closely related to DVI. In addition, the strongly-weakly upper semicontinuity, compactness and superpositionally measurability are investigated for the solution set of the considered variational inequality. The final part of
Section 2 provides some existence and qualitative properties for the solution set of the evolutionary problem (DVI). In order to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results presented in this paper, an application to differential Nash games is also provided.
2. Main Results
In this section, we study the existence of solutions for DVI in infinite-dimensional Banach spaces, and we also formulate some properties of the solution set. First, we recall some notations, notions and results which will be useful in the sequel.
Let
be the collection of all nonempty subsets for any nonempty set
S. Additionally, we introduce
and denote by “→” and “⇀” the strong convergence and the weak convergence, respectively, in a given Banach space
.
Definition 2 (see [
19])
. The set-valued mapping is said to be measurable if the set is measurable on , for every open subset . Definition 3. Let and be Banach spaces and let be an interval. The set-valued mapping is superpositionally measurable if is measurable, for every measurable set-valued mapping .
Lemma 1 (see [
5])
. Let be a Hausdorff topological vector space, is a nonempty subset and is a set-valued mapping such that(i) for any , one has that its convex hull is included in (i.e., G is a KKM mapping);
(ii) is closed in for every ;
(iii) is compact in for some .
Then it holds .
Lemma 2 (see [
20])
. is superpositionally measurable if it satisfies the Carathéodory condition or U is upper or lower semicontinuous. Then, the next theorem represents the first main result of this paper.
Theorem 1. Let be a reflexive Banach space, Ω be a nonempty closed and convex subset of and assume that
(i) is monotone onΩ
, that isand satisfies (ii) is lower semicontinuous, convex, ;
(iii) there exist and an such thatand satisfies if the set Ω is unbounded in .
Then, for each element , there exists such thatif and only if, for each element , there exists such that In addition, the solution set associated with is nonempty, convex and closed in .
Proof. If
is a solution associated with
, by using the monotonicity of
, it follows that
is also a solution of
. Conversely, assume that
is a solution of
. Taking into account the convexity of the set
, for all
and all
, it results that
. In consequence, we have
and, by assumption (ii), we get
Considering
in the above inequality (see the second part of hypothesis (i)), we obtain that
is also a solution of
.
Further, in order to prove the other assertions of our theorem, we consider the following two cases:
Case 1. Ω
is bounded in . Consider the set-valued mapping
defined as
It is of course immediate (from the above equivalent conclusion) that
, whenever
, and
is a convex set.
Now, let us show that
is weakly closed in
, for all
. Let
be a sequence with
in
. Therefore, we have
Passing to the limit as
in the above inequality, by hypothesis (ii), we get
that is
.
Further, we prove that the set-valued mapping
G is a KKM mapping (see Lemma 1). Suppose, by contradiction, that there exists
and
, with
and
, satisfying
, that is
By using the monotonicity of
, it follows
from which the contradiction arises
By using the hypothesis, it follows that is weakly compact in . Thus, for each , is weakly compact in . Now, by applying Lemma 1, we obtain , that is the solution set associated with is nonempty, so the same is true for the solution set associated with .
Case 2. Ω
is unbounded in . For every integer
, consider the bounded, closed and convex subset of
where
is given in assumption (iii). In accordance with the previous case, we can find
such that
In the following, let us show that there exists an integer
such that
By contradiction, assume that
for every integer
. Putting
in
, we get
which is a contradiction (see assumption (iii)), if
n is sufficiently large. Therefore, the claim in
is fulfilled. By
, for
and sufficiently small
, we have
Next, set
and
in
. By hypothesis (ii), it follows
that is,
is a solution of variational problem
.
Further, by using the equivalence between variational problems and and assumption (ii), we conclude that the solution set for is closed and convex in . The proof is now complete. □
Remark 1. Theorem 1 extends some results derived in Liu and Zeng [
21]
, Liu et al. [
3]
and it is based on the Browder’s theorem (see [
22]
). An extension of Minty’s technique is given by assertion , and a generalized coercivity condition is provided by assumption (iii). Corollary 1. Let be a real reflexive Banach space and a nonempty compact and convex subset of . Then, the conclusion of Theorem 1 is fulfilled if and verify conditions (i), (ii) in Theorem 1.
In the following, denote by the set of solutions associated with the variational inequality . Closely related to the evolutionary problem (DVI), by using of Theorem 1, we also establish the following two results.
Lemma 3. For each integer , under the same hypotheses of Theorem 1, there exists a constant satisfying Proof. By reductio ad absurdum, we assume that there exists
satisfying
In consequence, there exist
and
satisfying
, for
. By assumption (iii) of Theorem 1, it follows that there is a function
, with
as
, and a constant
such that for each
, we have
Therefore, for
, one has
and, as
k large enough,
This is a contradiction, and the proof is complete. □
Further, for
, we consider a set-valued mapping
given by
Theorem 2. Under the same hypotheses of Theorem 1, if is a continuous and uniformly bounded function, then
(i) the set-valued mapping Z is strongly-weakly upper semicontinuous;
(ii) there exists satisfyingfor all ; (iii) the set-valued mapping Z is superpositionally measurable.
Proof. (i) In accordance with Kamemsloo et al. [
19], for each weakly closed subset
C of
, we prove that
is strongly closed in
. Let prove that, if the sequence
and
, then
. By
, for
, we obtain that there exists
. We can assume that
(by using of the uniform boundedness of
g), where
is a positive constant. According to Lemma 3, there exists a constant
such that
, for
. Consequently, the sequence
is relatively weakly compact in
, and we may assume
, without loss of generality. Since
, for
, we get
In virtue of the monotonicity of
, it follows
Applying assumption (ii) of Theorem 1, the continuity of
g and
, we have
that is,
(since the problem
is equivalent with the problem
). By using the weak closedness of
C, we obtain
. Therefore,
Z is strongly-weakly upper semicontinuous.
(ii) By hypothesis,
is a continuous and uniformly bounded function. Therefore, for any
and for all
,
is uniformly bounded. By Lemma 3, there exists
satisfying
(iii) Since Z is strongly-weakly upper semicontinuous with weakly compact convex values, then assertion (iii) holds true (see Lemma 2). The proof is complete. □
In the following, consider the set-valued mapping such that
(a) for each , the set-valued mapping is measurable;
(b) for a.e. , the set-valued mapping is upper semicontinuous;
(c) for a.e.
and for all
, there exists
satisfying
Taking into account the above assumptions for
H, in accordance with Kamemsloo et al. [
19], the superposition set-valued mapping
, given by
is well-defined.
The next theorem represents the central result of this paper. It investigates the existence of solutions for DVI.
Theorem 3. Let be a compact -semigroup, a bounded linear operator and the assumptions (a)–(c) for H be fulfilled. Under the hypotheses of Theorem 2, DVI has at least one mild solution .
Proof. According to Pazy [
2], for
, the mild solutions of
may denoted by
By hypothesis and Rykaczewski [
23] it follows that
is solvable, that is, there exists
x satisfying
.
For every
and
, from
, we have the following estimates
or, equivalently, by the Gronwall’s inequality,
Next, we prove the existence of solutions for DVI. Set
where
, with
, and
is the character function of interval
. Now, there exists
satisfying
For the sequences
(see Theorem 2) there is
satisfying
. By the above computations, we get
, where
is a constant. Thus, by assumption (c) of
H, it follows that there is
satisfying
. Further, we may assume that
in
, without loss of generality, and
in
. By using that
is a compact
-semigroup and according to Li et al. [
24], it results that
in
, with
Further, by applying Mazur theorem (see Li et al. [
14]), we obtain that there are
with
such that
Since
is upper semicontinuous,
in
, then for
and
large enough, we get
where
is a ball in
centered in origin and radius
. Due to the convexity of
, it follows that
. Since
as
, we get
. For
arbitrarly, it results
. By the same arguments, we get
. Consequently, there are
and
such that
where
and
. The proof is complete. □
Illustrative application. Consider a noncooperative differential Nash game with
N players. Let
be the pair of state and control variables associated with player
, and
be the nonempty, closed and convex set of admissible controls for player
. In addition, consider
and
be the collection of all players’ variables, where
For
, consider
are continuously differentiable functions, and introduce the following cost functional associated with player
,
The corresponding optimization problem for player
is to find an optimal trajetory
, for each fixed but arbitrary rival players’ strategies
, such that
subject to
for almost all
, where
are continuously differentiable.
A differential Nash solution for the above optimization problem is a pair such that for every , the pair solves player ’s problem, given that ’s rivals all play their Nash strategies .
Further, by using the Hamiltonian function associated with player
, with
the adjoint variable of player
,
we are able to formulate the necessary optimality conditions of first-order, as follows
In consequence, the study of a noncooperative differential Nash game with N players is reduced to the study of the previous problem, which belongs to the class of problems investigated in the present paper.