Initial value problems in discrete fractional calculus

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of discrete fractional calculus; the particular goal is to define and solve well-defined discrete fractional difference equations. For this purpose we first carefully develop the commutativity properties of the fractional sum and the fractional difference operators. Then a v-th (0 < v ≤ 1) order fractional difference equation is defined. A nonlinear problem with an initial condition is solved and the corresponding linear problem with constant coefficients is solved as an example. Further, the half-order linear problem with constant coefficients is solved with a method of undetermined coefficients and with a transform method.