1. Introduction
In the early twentieth century, Jackson [
1] proposed a new mathematical direction of
q-calculus, and it plays an indispensable role in the fields of nuclear, conformal quantum mechanics and dynamics. In the 1960s, Agarwal [
2] and Al-Salam [
3] put forward a novel concept of fractional
q-calculus, its relevant application and development can be seen in the literature [
4,
5,
6]. Compared with classical
q-calculus, fractional
q-calculus can more accurately describe some phenomena in nature, and many practical problems can be abstracted into fractional
q-difference equations or a system of fractional
q-difference equations by mathematical modeling. In recent years, abundant theoretical achievements have been made in the research of boundary value problems (BVPs) for fractional
q-difference equations, according to the literature [
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16] and the references therein.
Riemann-Stieltjes integral is a generalization of Riemann integral. As well as we known, the classical Riemann-Stieltjes integral can be widely applied in several areas of analysis, such as probability theory, stochastic processes, physics, econometrics, biometrics and informetrics and so on. BVPs with Riemann-Stieltjes integral boundary condition (BC) have been considered as both multi-point and integral type BCs are treated in a single framework. In recent years, some interesting results about the existence of solutions for nonlinear fractional differential equations with the Riemann-Stieltjes integral BC have been researched, see [
17,
18] and the references therein.
Nowadays, the system of nonlinear fractional differential equations has important applications in engineering, economy and other fields. This is mainly because the effect of using fractional calculus to solve problems is more practical and efficient than that of classical calculus. Over the years, the BVPs for a system of fractional differential equations have developed rapidly, and numerous mature conclusions have been obtained, which can be referred to the literature [
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25].
In [
24], Tudorache, A. and Luca, R. applied the Guo-Krasnoselskii fixed point theorem to study the existence of solutions for a system of fractional differential equations with
p-Laplacian operators
with the nonlocal BCs
In [
25], Luca, R. considered the existence of solutions of the nonlinear system of fractional differential equations by using a variety of fixed point theorems
with the nonlocal BCs
Despite quite a number of contributions dealing with the solvability for the system of classical fractional difference equations. However, as the generalization of the above system, limited work has been done in the nonlinear system of fractional
q-difference equations. In particular, there is little research on the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the system of fractional
q-difference equations with Riemann-Stieltjes integral BC. To fill this gap, we investigate the system of nonlinear fractional
q-difference equations
with the nonlocal BCs
where
and
,
denotes the Riemann-Liouville
q-derivative of order
i (
),
is the Riemann-Liouville
q-integral of order
(
),
P and
Q are nonlinear functions. The BCs include Riemann-Stieltjes integrals, where
are the bounded variation functions. In the case where
, the Riemann–Stieltjes integrals in (2) reduce to the classical
q-integral.
The present paper is bulit up as follows. The second part offers the necessary definitions, lemmas and theorems needed in the following. The third part obtains the important conclusions by applying various fixed point theorems, including nine theorems or corollaries. In the final part, four examples are provided to verify our main results.
2. Preliminaries
In this section, we present some definitions, lemmas and theorems.
Definition 1 ([
11]).
Let and f be a function defined on . The fractional q-integral of the Riemann-Liouville type isObviously, , when . Definition 2 ([
11]).
The fractional q-derivative of the Riemann-Liouville type of order is defined by andwhere l is the smallest integer greater than or equal to β. Lemma 1 ([
11]).
Let and f be a function defined on .
Then, the following formulas hold:- 1.
- 2.
Lemma 2 ([
11]).
Let and p be a positive integer. Then, the following equality holds: Lemma 3. If , then for , we getwhere . Proof. According to Definition 1, this lemma clearly holds. □
Definition 3 ([
15]).
The function is called an S-Carathéodory function if and only if- (i)
for each is measurable on I;
- (ii)
for a.e. is continuous on ;
- (iii)
for each , there exists with on I such that implies , for a.e.I, where , and normed for all .
Theorem 1 ([
26]).
(Schauder fixed point theorem) Let D be a bounded closed convex set in E (D does not necessarily have an interior point), and is completely continuous, then A must have a fixed point in D. Theorem 2 ([
12]).
(Krasnoselskii’s fixed point theorem) Let K be a closed convex and nonempty subset of a Banach space X. Let be the operators such that- (i)
whenever ;
- (ii)
T is compact and continuous;
- (iii)
S is a contraction mapping.
Then, there exists such that
Theorem 3 ([
16]).
(Schaefer’s fixed point theorem) Let T be a continuous and compact mapping of a Banach space X into itself, such that the set is bounded. Then T has a fixed point. Theorem 4 ([
15]).
(Nonlinear alternative for single-valued maps) Let E be a Banach space, let C be a closed and convex subset of E, and let U be an open subset of C and . Suppose that is a continuous, compact (that is, is a relatively compact subset of C) map. Then either- (i)
F has a fixed point in , or
- (ii)
there is a (the boundary of U in C) and with .
Throughout this paper, we adopt the following assumptions:
The functions
and for
, there exist
, such that
The functions
and for
, there exist real constants
such that
The functions
and for
, there exist real functions
, such that
The functions
, and for
, there exist functions
and
, such that
The functions
, and for
, there exist functions
such that
The functions
and for a.e.
, there exist
such that
The functions
and for a.e.
, there exist non-negative real numbers
, and
, where at least one of
and
is positive, such that
The functions
and for a.e.
, there exist functions
, where
have at least one non-zero function, and there exist nondecreasing functions
, such that
For convenience, we denote
3. Criterion of Uniqueness and Existence
In this section, we show some existence and uniqueness results for the Systems (1)–(2).
Lemma 4. Let and , then the system of fractional q-difference equations with the coupled BCs (2) has a unique solution , namely Proof. The proof is similar to the Lemma 2.1 in [
24]. □
Let
and
be the Banach spaces with the norms
and
, respectively. Nowdays, we introduce the operator
, where
for
, and
are defined by
and
for
and
, where
According to Lemma 4, it is easy to see that is a solution of the Systems (1)–(2) if and only if is a fixed point of operator .
At first, we prove the existence and uniqueness theorem of the Systems (1)–(2) by Banach contraction mapping principle.
Theorem 5. Suppose that holds. If , andwhere . Then the Systems (1)–(2) has a unique solution. Proof. Let
such that
where
.
We divide two steps to prove the theorem.
(i) Our first task is to show that maps bounded sets into bounded sets in V.
Let
be a bounded set in
V and
. Then we show that
. By
and Lemma 3, we get
similarly,
According to the expression of operators
and
, we obtain
thus, we have
in like wise,
Using (5) and (6), we obtain that for
,
that is
.
(ii) The next step is to prove that operator is a contraction.
For
, we get
By (7), we have
hence, we deduce
For the same way, we can obtain
From (8) and (9), we have
Due to
, it follows that
, so operator
is a contraction. Hence, we obtain that the Systems (1)–(2) has a unique solution
by using Banach contraction mapping principle. The proof is completed. □
Corollary 1. Suppose that holds. If , andwhere . Then the Systems (1)–(2) has a unique solution. Corollary 2. Suppose that holds. If , andwhere . Then the Systems (1)–(2) has a unique solution. Next, we apply several kinds of fixed point theorems to achieve the existence results of solutions for the Systems (1)–(2).
Theorem 6. Suppose that and hold. Then the System (1)–(2) has at least one solution.
Proof. Let
, and we denote
where there exist
such that
.
Firstly, we show that
maps bounded sets into bounded sets in
V. For
, we obtain
similarly,
, then
as above, we obtain
.
Secondly, we prove that
maps bounded sets into equicontinuous sets of
V. Let
, for simplicity of presentation, we denote that
then for
and
with
, we have
The same can be proved that
Hence, we conclude
as
. Thus,
is equicontinuous. According to the Arzela-Ascoli theorem, it follows that the set
is relatively compact. Therefore,
is compact on
. By Theorem 1, we get that the System (1)–(2) has at least one solution. The proof is completed. □
Theorem 7. Suppose that and hold. If , andThen the System (1)–(2) has at least one solution. Proof. Let
, and let the operators be
and
where
are denoted by
where
. Thus,
and
.
By
, we know that
,
For
, and
, we have
Hence, the operator
is a contraction.
Owing to the continuity of
P and
Q,
is continuous. Next, we need to verify that
is a compact operator. Due to
,
we have derived that the functions from
are uniformly bounded.
We can show the equicontinuous of the functions from
. We denote that
for
and
with
. An argument similar to the one used in the proof of Theorem 6 shows that
as
. Therefore,
is equicontinuous. Then, we can see that
is relatively compact. Hence,
is compact on
. Using Theorem 2, we know that the System (1)–(2) has at least one solution. The proof is completed. □
Remark 1. Evidently, we prove that the operator is a contraction, the operator is compact and continuous in Theorem 7. An alternative method of proof is to show that is compact and continuous, is a contraction, that is Theorem 8.
Theorem 8. Suppose that and hold. If , andThen the Systems (1)–(2) has at least one solution. Proof. On the basis of Remark 1, this theorem can be proved by the same method as employed in Theorem 7. □
Theorem 9. Suppose that are S-Carathéodory functions and hold. If , andwhere , and there exist such that , and . Then, the System (1)–(2) has at least one solution. Proof. The main point of Theorem 9 is to prove is completely continuous. Firstly, for the continuity of functions P and Q, we obtain that the operator is continuous. Secondly, we show that is compact.
Let the set
be bounded. Then, there exist integrable functions
and
such that for
, we have
According to the Theorem 5, we get
where
Then
in a similar manner, we have
so
,
therefore,
is uniformly bounded.
Another step is to show that is equicontinuous. Proceeding as in the proof of Theorem 6, we obtain and , as . Thus, is equicontinuous. At the same time, we can also obtain that is completely continuous.
Finally, we illustrate that
is bounded. Let
, then
, we have
. For simplicity, we denote that
so,
then
hence,
Similarly,
by means of (11) and (12), we have
Due to
, we get
thus,
is bounded.
By Theorem 3, it is time to say that the Systems (1)–(2) has at least one solution. Hence, the statements in Theorem 9 are proved. □
Corollary 3. Suppose that are S-Carathéodory functions and hold. If , andwhere Then the Systems (1)–(2) has at least one solution. Theorem 10. Suppose that are S-Carathéodory functions and hold. If and there exists such thatThen the Systems (1)–(2) has at least one solution. Proof. Let
. Firstly, we prove that
. For
and
, we have
and
For
, we have
Consequently,
. At the same time, it is easy to see that
is completely continuous, which can be derived in the same way as employed in Theorem 6.
Furthermore, assume that there exists such that for , it is simple to get , this leads to a contradiction for . Therefore, by applying Theorem 4, we deduce that has a fixed point , which is a solution of the Systems (1)–(2). The proof is completed. □
4. Application Examples
In this section, for the system with the different nonlinearity terms, some examples are appreciated to illustrate our main results.
We consider the following system of fractional
q-difference equations:
with the nonlocal BCs
where
After a simple caculation, we obtain
Example 1. Consider the nonlinear terms of the systemwhere For we obtain It is obvious that ,,, and , ,, By a simple computation, we obtain and , respectively. By Theorem 5, the Systems (12)–(13) has a unique solution.
Example 2. Consider the nonlinear terms of the systemwhere It is clear that Therefore, the assumption is satisfied with and . By Theorem 6, the Systems (12)–(13) has at least one solution.
Example 3. Consider the nonlinear terms of the systemwhere For We obtainand It is obvious that . By a simple computation, we have , and , respectively. Therefore, the assumptions , and are satisfied, by Theorem 7, the Systems (12)–(13) has at least one solution.
Example 4. Consider the nonlinear terms of the systemwhere It is clear that Hence, . By a simple computation, we obtain , and , respectively. By Corollary 3, the Systems (12)–(13) has at least one solution.
5. Discussion
The system of fractional
q-difference equations plays an extremely crucial role in many fields, such as quantum mechanics, dynamical systems, black holes, mathematical physics equations and so on, see [
2,
3,
5,
6,
27,
28,
29,
30] and the references therein. In this article, we are concerned with the solvability of a system of fractional
q-difference equations with Riemann-Stieltjes integrals conditions based on some classical fixed point theorems. We obtain the multiple existence and uniqueness conclusions for the Systems (1)–(2). As a matter of fact, in the limit
, the system studied in this paper reduces to the classical system of fractional differential equations. It follows that the results we have discussed are the generalization of the classical analysis, they can extend classical theory in order to expand the range of the possible applications. In the future, we will devote ourselves to finding new inspirations and outstanding methods to overcome the more complex practical problems associated with the system of fractional
q-difference equations. Moreover, we will investigate numerical methods for this kind of system.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, C.Y. and J.W.; methodology, C.Y. and S.W.; validation, C.Y., J.W. and J.L.; formal analysis, J.W.; resources, S.W.; data curation, C.Y.; writing—original draft preparation, S.W.; writing—review and editing, C.Y., J.W. and J.L.; supervision, C.Y. and J.L.; funding acquisition, C.Y., J.W. and J.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
The research project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (12272011, 11772007), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z180005, 1172002), Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (A2015208114) and the Foundation of Hebei Education Department (QN2017063).
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank referees for their extraordinary comments, which help to enrich the content of this paper.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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