On the boundedness and the asymptotic behaviour of the non-negative solutions of Volterra-Hammerstein integral equations

Abstract

We study the Volterra-Hammerstein integral equation

$$U(t,x) = U_O (t,x) + \mathop \smallint \limits_O^t \mathop \smallint \limits_D f(y, U (t - s,y)) h (x,y,s)dsdy,$$

t≥0, x∈D. We derive sufficient conditions for the boundedness of all non-negative solutions U. We show that, for bounded non-negative solutions U, U(t,.) is positive on D for sufficiently large t>0, if we impose appropriate positivity assumptions on f and h. If we additionally assume that, for y∈D, rf(y,r) strictly monotone increases and f(y,r)/r strictly monotone decreases as r>0 increases, the following alternative holds for any bounded non-negative solution U: Either U(t,.) converges toward zero for t→∞, pointwise on D, or U(t,.) converges, for t→∞, toward the unique bounded positive solution of the corresponding Hammerstein integral equation, uniformly on D. We indicate conditions for the occurrence of each of the two cases.