Abstract and Applied Analysis

Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 406757, 13 pages

doi:10.1155/2012/406757

Research Article

On the Definitions of Nabla Fractional Operators

Thabet Abdeljawad¹ and Ferhan M. Atici²

¹Department of Mathematics, Çankaya University, 06530 Ankara, Turkey

²Department of Mathematics, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101, USA

Received 12 April 2012; Accepted 4 September 2012

Academic Editor: Dumitru Bǎleanu

Copyright © 2012 Thabet Abdeljawad and Ferhan M. Atici. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

We show that two recent definitions of discrete nabla fractional sum operators are related. Obtaining such a relation between two operators allows one to prove basic properties of the one operator by using the known properties of the other. We illustrate this idea with proving power rule and commutative property of discrete fractional sum operators. We also introduce and prove summation by parts formulas for the right and left fractional sum and difference operators, where we employ the Riemann-Liouville definition of the fractional difference. We formalize initial value problems for nonlinear fractional difference equations as an application of our findings. An alternative definition for the nabla right fractional difference operator is also introduced.

1. Introduction

The following definitions of the backward (nabla) discrete fractional sum operators were given in [1, 2], respectively. For any given positive real number , we have

where , and

where .

One significant difference between these two operators is that the sum in (1.1) starts at and the sum in (1.2) starts at . In this paper we aim to answer the following question:

Do these two definitions lead the development of the theory of the nabla fractional difference equations in two directions?

In order to answer this question, we first obtain a relation between the operators in (1.1) and (1.2). Then we illustrate how such a relation helps one to prove basic properties of the one operator if similar properties of the other are already known.

In recent years, discrete fractional calculus gains a great deal of interest by several mathematicians. First Miller and Ross [3] and then Gray and Zhang [1] introduced discrete versions of the Riemann-Liouville left fractional integrals and derivatives, called the fractional sums and differences with the delta and nabla operators, respectively. For recent developments of the theory, we refer the reader to the papers [2, 4–19]. For further reading in this area, we refer the reader to the books on fractional differential equations [20–23].

The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we summarize some of basic notations and definitions in discrete nabla calculus. We employ the Riemann-Liouville definition of the fractional difference. In Section 3, we obtain two relations between the operators and . So by the use of these relations we prove some properties for -operator. Section 4 is devoted to summation by parts formulas. In Section 5, we formalize initial value problems and obtain corresponding summation equation with -operator. This section can be considered as an application of the results in Section 3. Finally, in Section 6, a definition of the nabla right fractional difference resembling the nabla right fractional sum is formulated. This definition can be used to prove continuity of the nabla right fractional differences with respect to the order .

2. Notations and Basic Definitions

Definition 2.1. (i) For a natural number , the rising (ascending) factorial of is defined by

(ii) For any real number , the rising function is defined by

Throughout this paper, we will use the following notations.

(i) For real numbers and , we denote and .(ii) For , we define

Definition 2.2. Let be the backward jump operator. Then

(i)the (nabla) left fractional sum of order (starting from ) is defined by

(ii)the (nabla) right fractional sum of order (ending at ) is defined by

We want to point out that the nabla left fractional sum operator has the following characteristics.

(i) maps functions defined on to functions defined on .(ii) satisfies the th order discrete initial value problem

(iii)The Cauchy function satisfies .

In the same manner, it is worth noting that the nabla right fractional sum operator has the following characteristics.

(i) maps functions defined on to functions defined on .(ii) satisfies the th order discrete initial value problem

(iii)The Cauchy function satisfies .

Definition 2.3.

(i)The (nabla) left fractional difference of order is defined by

(ii)The (nabla) right fractional difference of order is defined by

Here and throughout the paper , where is the greatest integer less than or equal .

Regarding the domains of the fractional difference operators we observe the following.

(i)The nabla left fractional difference maps functions defined on to functions defined on (on if we think before ).(ii)The nabla right fractional difference maps functions defined on to functions defined on (on if we think after ).

3. A Relation between the Operators and

In this section we illustrate how two operators, and are related.

Lemma 3.1. The following holds:

(i), (ii).

Proof. The proof of (i) follows immediately from the above definitions (1.1) and (1.2). For the proof of (ii), we have

Next three lemmas show that the above relations on the operators (1.1) and (1.2) help us to prove some identities and properties for the operator by the use of known identities for the operator .

Lemma 3.2. The following holds:

Proof. It follows from Lemma 3.1 and Theorem  2.1 in [13]

Lemma 3.3. Let and . Then for , the following equality holds

Proof. It follows from Theorem  2.1 in [13]

Lemma 3.4. Let be a real-valued function defined on , and let . Then

Proof. It follows from Lemma 3.1 and Theorem  2.1 in [2]

Remark 3.5. Let and . Then, by Lemma 3.2 we have

or

Then, using the identity

we verified that (3.2) is valid for any real .

By using Lemma 3.1, Remark 3.5, and the identity , we arrive inductively at the following generalization.

Theorem 3.6. For any real number and any positive integer , the following equality holds:

where is defined on .

Lemma 3.7. For any , the following equality holds:

Proof. By using of the following summation by parts formula

we have

On the other hand,

where the identity

and the convention that are used.

Remark 3.8. Let and . Then, by the help of Lemma 3.7 we have

or

Then, using the identity

we verified that (3.12) is valid for any real .

By using Lemma 3.7, Remark 3.8, and the identity , we arrive inductively at the following generalization.

Theorem 3.9. For any real number and any positive integer , the following equality holds:

where is defined on .

We finish this section by stating the commutative property for the right fractional sum operators without giving its proof.

Lemma 3.10. Let be a real valued function defined on , and let , . Then

4. Summation by Parts Formulas for Fractional Sums and Differences

We first state summation by parts formula for nabla fractional sum operators.

Theorem 4.1. For ,   , , defined on and defined on , the following equality holds

Proof. By the definition of the nabla left fractional sum we have

If we interchange the order of summation we reach (4.1).

By using Theorem 3.6, Lemma 3.4, and , we prove the following result.

Theorem 4.2. For , and defined in a suitable domain , the following are valid

We recall that , where is the Riemann-Liouville fractional integral, is valid for sufficiently smooth functions such as continuous functions. As a result of this it is possible to obtain integration by parts formula for a certain class of functions (see [23] page 76, and for more details see [22]). Since discrete functions are continuous we see that the term , for disappears in (4.4), with the application of the convention that .

By using Theorem 3.9, Lemma 3.10, and , we obtain the following.

Theorem 4.3. For , and defined in a suitable domain , we have

Theorem 4.4. Let be noninteger. If is defined on and is defined on , then

Proof. Equation (4.7) implies that

And by Theorem 4.1 we have

Then the result follows by (4.4).

5. Initial Value Problems

Let us consider the following initial value problem for a nonlinear fractional difference equation

where and is any real number.

Apply the operator to each side of (5.1) to obtain

Then using the definition of the fractional difference and sum operators we obtain

It follows from Lemma 3.2 that

Note that

Hence we obtain

which follows from the power rule in Lemma 3.3.

Let us put this expression back in (5.5) and use (4.4), we have

Thus, we have proved the following lemma.

Lemma 5.1. is a solution of the initial value problem, (5.1), (5.2), if, and only if, has the representation (5.9).

Remark 5.2. A similar result has been obtained in the paper [13] with the operator . And the initial value problem has been defined in the following form

where and is any real number. The subscript of the term on the left hand side of (5.10) indicates directly that the solution has a domain starts at . The nature of this notation helps us to use the nabla transform easily as one can see in the papers [2, 12]. On the other hand, the subscript in (5.1) indicates that the solution has a domain starts at .

6. An Alternative Definition of Nabla Fractional Differences

Recently, the authors in [18], by the help of a nabla Leibniz’s Rule, have rewritten the nabla left fractional difference in a form similar to the definition of the nabla left fractional sum. In this section, we do this for the nabla right fractional differences.

The following delta Leibniz’s Rule will be used:

Using the following identity

and the definition of the nabla right fractional difference (ii) of Definition 2.3, for , we have

By applying the Leibniz’s Rule (6.1), number of times we get

In the above, it is to be insisted that is required due the fact that the term is undefined for negative integers. Therefore we can proceed and unify the definitions of nabla right fractional sums and differences similar to Definition  5.3 in [18]. Also, the alternative formula (6.4) can be employed, similar to Theorem  5.4 in [18], to show that the nabla right fractional difference is continuous with respect to .

7. Conclusions

In fractional calculus there are two approaches to obtain fractional derivatives. The first approach is by iterating the integral and then defining a fractional order by using Cauchy formula to obtain Riemann fractional integrals and derivatives. The second approach is by iterating the derivative and then defining a fractional order by making use of the binomial theorem to obtain Grünwald-Letnikov fractional derivatives. In this paper we followed the discrete form of the first approach via the nabla difference operator. However, we noticed that in the right fractional difference case we used both the nabla and delta difference operators. This setting enables us to obtain reasonable summation by parts formulas for nabla fractional sums and differences in Section 4 and to obtain an alternative definition for nabla right fractional differences through the delta Leibniz’s Rule in Section 6.

While following the discrete form of the first approach, two types of fractional sums and hence fractional differences appeared; one type by starting from and the other type, which obeys the general theory of nabla time scale calculus, by starting from in the left case and ending at in the right case. Section 3 discussed the relation between the two types of operators, where certain properties of one operator are obtained by using the second operator.

An initial value problem discussed in Section 5 is an important application exposing the derived properties of the two types of operators discussed throughout the paper, where the solution representation was obtained explicitly for order . Regarding this example we remark the following. In fractional calculus, Initial value problems usually make sense for functions not necessarily continuous at (left case) so that the initial conditions are given by means of . Since sequences are nice continuous functions then in Theorem 4.2, which is the tool in solving our example, the identity (4.4) appears without any initial condition. To create an initial condition in our example we shifted the fractional difference operator so that it started at .

Acknowledgment

The second author is grateful to the Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation for financial support through research Grant KSEF-2488-RDE-014.

References

H. L. Gray and N. F. Zhang, “On a new definition of the fractional difference,” Mathematics of Computation, vol. 50, no. 182, pp. 513–529, 1988.

F. M. Atıcı and P. W. Eloe, “Discrete fractional calculus with the nabla operator,” Electronic Journal of Qualitative Theory of Differential Equations, no. 3, pp. 1–12, 2009.

K. S. Miller and B. Ross, “Fractional difference calculus,” in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Univalent Functions, Fractional Calculus and Their Applications, pp. 139–152, Nihon University, Koriyama, Japan, 1989.

T. Abdeljawad, “On Riemann and Caputo fractional differences,” Computers & Mathematics with Applications, vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 1602–1611, 2011.

T. Abdeljawad and D. Baleanu, “Fractional differences and integration by parts,” Journal of Computational Analysis and Applications, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 574–582, 2011.

F. Jarad, T. Abdeljawad, D. Baleanu, and K. Biçen, “On the stability of some discrete fractional nonautonomous systems,” Abstract and Applied Analysis, vol. 2012, Article ID 476581, 9 pages, 2012.

J. Fahd, T. Abdeljawad, E. Gündoğdu, and D. Baleanu, “On the Mittag-Leffler stability of q-fractional nonlinear dynamical systems,” Proceedings of the Romanian Academy, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 309–314, 2011.

T. Abdeljawad and D. Baleanu, “Caputo q-fractional initial value problems and a q-analogue Mittag-Leffler function,” Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, vol. 16, no. 12, pp. 4682–4688, 2011.

F. M. Atici and P. W. Eloe, “A transform method in discrete fractional calculus,” International Journal of Difference Equations, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 165–176, 2007.

F. M. Atici and P. W. Eloe, “Initial value problems in discrete fractional calculus,” Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 137, no. 3, pp. 981–989, 2009.

F. M. Atıcı and S. Şengül, “Modeling with fractional difference equations,” Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, vol. 369, no. 1, pp. 1–9, 2010.

F. M. Atici and P. W. Eloe, “Linear systems of fractional nabla difference equations,” The Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 353–370, 2011.

F. M. Atıcı and P. W. Eloe, “Gronwall’s inequality on discrete fractional calculus,” Computer and Mathematics with Applications. In press

R. A. C. Ferreira and D. F. M. Torres, “Fractional h-difference equations arising from the calculus of variations,” Applicable Analysis and Discrete Mathematics, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 110–121, 2011.

C. S. Goodrich, “Existence of a positive solution to a class of fractional differential equations,” Applied Mathematics Letters, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 1050–1055, 2010.

Nuno R. O. Bastos, Rui A. C. Ferreira, and Delfim F. M. Torres, “Discrete-time fractional variational problems,” Signal Processing, vol. 91, no. 3, pp. 513–524, 2011.

G. A. Anastassiou, “Nabla discrete fractional calculus and nabla inequalities,” Mathematical and Computer Modelling, vol. 51, no. 5-6, pp. 562–571, 2010.

K. Ahrendt, L. Castle, M. Holm, and K. Yochman, “Laplace transforms for the nabla -difference operator and a fractional variation of parameters formula,” Communications in Applied Analysis. In press

J. Hein, Z. McCarthy, N. Gaswick, B. McKain, and K. Speer, “Laplace transforms for the nabla-difference operator,” Panamerican Mathematical Journal, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 79–97, 2011.

K. S. Miller and B. Ross, An Introduction to the Fractional Calculus and Fractional Differential Equations, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, USA, 1993.

I. Podlubny, Fractional Differential Equations, Academic Press, San Diego, Calif, USA, 1999.

S. G. Samko, A. A. Kilbas, and O. I. Marichev, Fractional Integrals and Derivatives: Theory and Applications, Gordon and Breach, Yverdon, Switzerland, 1993.

A. A. Kilbas, H. M. Srivastava, and J. J. Trujillo, Theory and Application of Fractional Differential Equations, vol. 204 of North-Holland Mathematics Studies, 2006.