K. Wang et al. / Nonlinear Analysis 74 (2011) 2869–2879 2871
i.e., v(δ
m
) ∈ Ω. Since v(t) is continuous, there exists a constant β > 0 that v(t) ∈ Ω for all t ∈ (δ
m
− β, δ
m
+ β). Noticing
that v(t) ∈ Ω for all t ∈ [t
0
, δ
m
), we have v(t) ∈ Ω for all t ∈ [t
0
, δ
m
+ β), which contradicts with the definition of δ
m
.
Therefore, δ
m
= +∞.
Inequality (6) shows that v(t) ≡ e if v(t
0
) = e. Substituting it into (2), we have
˙
e = H(e) = 0. So e is an equilibrium
point of (2). Inequality (4) shows that the equilibrium point e is exponentially stable.
Remark 1. (i) The limitation in (3) does exist. In fact, it is easy to prove that for all x, y ∈ R
k
(x = 0), function f (s) =
‖x−sy‖−‖x‖
s‖x‖
is monotonically increasing in (0, +∞), and ∀s ∈ (0, +∞), |f (s)| ≤ ‖x‖
−1
‖y‖. So lim
s→o
+
f (s) exists.
(ii) If system (2) is linear, and that the norm ‖ · ‖ used in (3) is an l
2
norm, then α(H, Ω, e) defined in (3) is a kind of matrix
measure of H [13]. So the characteristic value α(H, Ω, e) is a kind of nonlinear extension of matrix measures. A similar
term with l
1
norm has been introduced in [12] that is named as nonlinear measure. The meaning of introducing index
α(H, Ω, e) is obvious: in a nonlinear system, the exponential stability and its corresponding process of exponential
decay can be described by α(H, Ω, e) quantitatively as we do in the linear system.
Notice that α(H, Ω, e) depends on not only the function H, the domain Ω and the point e, but also the selection of the
norm ‖ · ‖. In fact, the freedom in choosing the norm makes α(H, Ω, e) valuable in applications. When ‖ · ‖ is l
2
-norm, we
have
α(H, Ω, e) = sup
v∈Ω /e
t∈[t
0
,∞)
lim
s→0
+
‖v − e + sH(t, v)‖ − ‖v − e‖
s‖v − e‖
= sup
v∈Ω /e
t∈[t
0
,∞)
lim
s→0
+
‖v − e + sH(t, v)‖
2
− ‖v − e‖
2
s‖v − e‖(‖v − e + sH(t, v)‖ + ‖v − e‖)
= sup
v∈Ω /e
t∈[t
0
,∞)
lim
s→0
+
‖v − e‖
2
+ 2⟨v − e, sH(t, v)⟩ + s
2
‖H(t, v)‖
2
− ‖v − e‖
2
s‖v − e‖(‖v − e + sH(t, v)‖ + ‖v − e‖)
= sup
v∈Ω /e
t∈[t
0
,∞)
lim
s→0
+
2⟨v − e, sH(t, v)⟩ + s
2
‖H(t, v)‖
2
s‖v − e‖(‖v − e + sH(t, v)‖ + ‖v − e‖)
= sup
v∈Ω /e
t∈[t
0
,∞)
⟨v − e, H(t, v)⟩
‖v − e‖
2
. (7)
In the following proposition, we give a result about the boundedness of the solution v(t) to some nonlinear systems.
Without losing generality, here we just consider the situation that e = 0 for convenience.
Proposition 2. Consider the following system:
˙v(t) = H(t, v(t)) + B(t, v(t)), v(t) ∈ R
k
, t ≥ t
0
. (8)
Suppose that H is absolutely continuous and Ω = {v ∈ R
k
: ‖v‖ < r, r > 0}. B(t, v(t)) is bounded in R
+
× Ω such that
b = sup
(t,v)∈R
+
×Ω
‖B(t, v(t))‖,
where ‖ · ‖ is a vector norm. If α(H, Ω, 0) < 0 and −α(H, Ω, 0)
−1
b < r, then the solution v(t) to (8) exponentially converges
to
Γ = {v ∈ R
k
: ‖v‖ ≤ −α(H, Ω, 0)
−1
b}
if v(t
0
) ∈ Ω.
Proof. Suppose that v(t) is a solution to system (8). It is easy to see that ‖v(t)‖ is absolutely continuous in [t
0
, +∞), so that
it is differentiable in [t
0
, +∞) a.e. Similar to the proof of inequality (5), we have
d‖v(t)‖
dt
≤ lim
s→0
+
‖v(t) + s[H(t, v(t)) + B(t, v)]‖ − ‖v(t)‖
s
≤ lim
s→0
+
‖v(t) + sH(t, v(t))‖ − ‖v(t)‖
s
+ ‖B(t, v)‖
≤ α(H, Ω, 0)‖v(t)‖ + b,
which holds at every differentiable point t. By simple integration we can derive that for all t ≥ t
0
,
‖v(t)‖ ≤ e
α(H,Ω ,0)(t−t
0
)
‖v(t
0
)‖ − bα(H, Ω, 0)
−1
1 − e
α(H,Ω ,0)(t−t
0
)
.