The Fractional Calculus

This brief presents a general unifying perspective on the fractional calculus. It brings together results of several recent approaches in generalizing the least action principle and the Euler–Lagrange equations to include fractional derivatives.

In the last three decades, fractional calculus has broken into the field of mathematical analysis, both at the theoretical level and at the level of its applications. In essence, the fractional calculus theory is a mathematical analysis tool applied to the study of integrals and derivatives of arbitrary order, which unifies and generalizes the classical notions of differentiation and integration. These fractional and derivative integrals, which until not many years ago had been used in purely mathematical contexts, have been revealed as instruments with great potential to model problems in various scientific fields, such as: fluid mechanics, viscoelasticity, physics, biology, chemistry, dynamical systems, signal processing or entropy theory.

When a new extraordinary and outstanding theory is stated, it has to face criticism and skepticism, because it is beyond the usual concept. The fractional calculus though not new, was not discussed or developed for a long time, particularly for lack of its applications to real life problems. It is extraordinary because it does not deal with ‘ordinary’ differential calculus. It is outstanding because it can now be applied to situations where existing theories fail to give satisfactory results. In this book not only mathematical abstractions are discussed in a lucid manner, but also several practical applications are given particularly for system identification, description and then efficient controls.

Fractional calculus and its applications are fascinating research areas in many engineering disciplines. This book is a comprehensive collection of research from the author's group, which is one of the most active in the fractional calculus community worldwide and is the birthplace of one of the four MATLAB toolboxes in fractional calculus, the FOTF Toolbox. The book presents high-precision solution algorithms for a variety of fractional-order differential equations, including nonlinear, delay, and boundary value equations. Currently, there are no other universal solvers available for the latter two types of equations.

This book deals with the quantitative fractional Korovkin type approximation of stochastic processes. Computational and fractional analysis play more and more a central role in nowadays either by themselves or because they cover a great variety of applications in the real world. The author applies generalized fractional differentiation techniques of Caputo, Canavati and Conformable types to a great variety of integral inequalities, e.g. of Ostrowski and Opial types, etc. Some of these are extended to Banach space valued functions.

The study of fractional integrals and fractional derivatives has a long history, and they have many real-world applications due to their properties of interpolation between operators of integer order. This field has covered classical fractional operators such as Riemann–Liouville, Weyl, Caputo, Grünwald–Letnikov, etc. Also, especially in the last two decades, many new operators have appeared, often defined using integrals with special functions in the kernel, such as Atangana–Baleanu, Prabhakar, Marichev–Saigo–Maeda, and tempered, as well as their extended or multivariable forms. These have been intensively studied because they can also be useful in modelling and analysing real-world processes because of their different properties and behaviours, which are comparable to those of the classical operators.

This book is devoted to the application of fractional calculus in economics to describe processes with memory and non-locality. Fractional calculus is a branch of mathematics that studies the properties of differential and integral operators that are characterized by real or complex orders.

The book investigates the fractional calculus-based approaches and their benefits to adopting in complex real-time areas. Another objective is to provide initial solutions for new areas where fractional theory has yet to verify the expertise. The book focuses on the latest scientific interest and illustrates the basic idea of general fractional calculus with MATLAB codes. This book is ideal for researchers working on fractional calculus theory both in simulation and hardware. Researchers from academia and industry working or starting research in applied fractional calculus methods will find the book most useful. The scope of this book covers most of the theoretical and practical studies on linear and nonlinear systems using fractional-order integro-differential operators.

This book focuses on exploring new developments in both pure and applied mathematics as a result of fractional behaviour. It covers the range of ongoing activities in the context of fractional calculus by offering alternate viewpoints, workable solutions, new derivatives, and methods to solve real-world problems.