Dichotomy Spectrum for Nonautonomous Differential Equations

Abstract

For nonautonomous linear differential equations ⋅x=A(t) x with locally integrable A: R→R N×N the so-called dichotomy spectrum is investigated in this paper. As the closely related dichotomy spectrum for skew product flows with compact base (Sacker–Sell spectrum) our dichotomy spectrum for nonautonomous differential equations consists of at most N closed intervals, which in contrast to the Sacker–Sell spectrum may be unbounded. In the constant coefficients case these intervals reduce to the real parts of the eigenvalues of A. In any case the spectral intervals are associated with spectral manifolds comprising solutions with a common exponential growth rate. The main result of this paper is a spectral theorem which describes all possible forms of the dichotomy spectrum.