Multiple Solutions for a Class of Singular Boundary Value Problems of Hadamard Fractional Differential Systems with p-Laplacian Operator ()
1. Introduction
During the last few decades, fractional calculus has garnered significant attention. In particular, the study of fractional differential systems has become increasingly popular and important due to its widespread applications in various fields of science and engineering. So, numerous monographs have been published focusing on the fractional differential systems [1]-[3]. Moreover, it is well acknowledged that Leibenson [4] introduced the following differential equation with the p-Laplacian operator to investigate the turbulent flow in a porous medium
This has led to a surge of interest in boundary value problems associated with the p-Laplacian, owing to their implications in both theoretical and practical aspects of mathematics and physics [5]. Recently, lots of scholars discussed the existence and multiplicity of solutions for boundary value problems of fractional differential equation with p-Laplacian operator. For details, see [6] [7].
As we know, the Riemann-Liouville derivative stands out as one of the earliest fractional derivatives which have attracted considerable attention [8] [9]. For instance, [10] investigated the following Riemann-Liouville fractional differential system with integral boundary conditions:
where
,
,
denotes the Riemann-Liouville fractional derivative of order
, and
. By applying the properties of Green’s function and Bai-Ge’s fixed point theorem, the existence of multiple positive solutions was obtained.
Another type of fractional derivative, known as the Hadamard fractional derivative, was proposed by Jacques Hadamard [11] in 1982. It differs from Riemann-Liouville derivative by incorporating a logarithmic function in the integral kernel. Recently, a great number of works focused on fractional differential systems with Hadamard fractional derivatives. For example, in [12], Alesem studied the following fractional differential system with Hadamard fractional derivative:
subject to the following boundary conditions:
where
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
, and
.
and
are constants.
denotes the Hadamard fractional derivative of order
. Several existence results of positive solutions for the above problem were studied by means of Guo-Krasnosel’skii fixed point theorem on cones.
Furthermore, singular boundary value problems are a classic branch of research and arise from various fields of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, biomathematics, and chemistry. These singular boundary problems involve time singularities and nonlinearities having singularities in space variables. In recent years, many important results have been obtained based on theoretical developments and practical applications [13]-[16]. For instance, Wang [17] discussed a class of singular fractional differential systems with nonlocal boundary value conditions:
where
(
),
,
,
,
is nonnegative,
denotes the Riemann-Stieltjes integral, and V is a bounded variation function.
may be singular at
and
. By applying the fixed point index theory, the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions were attained.
From all aforementioned analysis, we find the fact that there exist several unresolved issues presented in the field. For example, there exist few papers focusing on singular boundary value problems of Hadamard fractional differential systems involving p-Laplacian operator. Moreover, the existing literature predominantly focuses on the existence and multiplicity of nontrivial positive solutions of fractional differential systems, neglecting a broader spectrum of potential scenarios. We have also observed a gap in that no papers concern singular boundary problems of Hadamard fractional differential systems when there are some connections between the nonlinear terms in the present paper.
Motivated by the above, we discuss in this paper the existence of multiple solutions for singular boundary value problems (SBVP, for short) of Hadamard fractional differential systems with p-Laplacian operator as follows:
(1.1)
where
,
,
,
,
and
are constants.
denotes the Hadamard fractional derivative of order
.
,
,
, and
.
,
, and
.
may be singular at
and
.
This manuscript has the following novel characteristics. Firstly, SBVP (1.1) is of a Hadamard fractional differential system equipping with the p-Laplacian operator. Secondly, the existence and multiplicity of solutions to SBVP (1.1) are considered in this manuscript when f and g are singular at
, and
. Thirdly, a relatively new cone is constructed to deal with the singularity of SBVP (1.1). Finally, in the resulting solution
, the component u is positive, but the component v is permitted to exhibit varying signs, potentially even negative.
The rest of the present work is organized as follows. Section 2 gives some fundamental definitions and necessary lemmas. In Section 3, we investigate the existence of multiple solutions for SBVP (1.1) with the help of the properties of Green’s function and the theory of fixed point index on the cone. Finally, in Section 4, a specific example is presented to support the main results.
2. Preliminaries
We begin this section by introducing some basic definitions and lemmas from fractional calculus theory.
Definition 2.1. ([18]) The left-sided Hadamard fractional integral of order
for a function
(
) is defined as follows:
where
is a gamma function.
Definition 2.2. ([18]) The left-sided Hamadard fractional derivative of order
for a function
is defined as follows:
where
, and
denotes integer part of number
.
Lemma 2.1. ([18]) Let
,
. Then the fractional differential equation
has a unique solutions
where
is arbitrary constants,
,
.
Lemma 2.2. ([18]) Let
,
be a Hadamard fractional derivative of order
. Assume that
. Then
where
is arbitrary constants,
,
.
Lemma 2.3. ([18]) Let
with
, then the following equations hold:
in particular,
,
.
Lemma 2.4. ([18]) Let
and
, then
Lemma 2.5. (Ascoli-Arzelà theorem [19])
is relative compact if and only if H is equicontinuous, and for any
,
is a relatively compact set in E.
Lemma 2.6. ([19]) Let X be a Banach space and P be a cone in X. Denote
and
(
). Let
be a complete continuous mapping, then the following conclusions hold.
1) If
for
and
, then
.
2) If
and
for
and
, then
.
3. Main Results
In this section, the solutions for SBVP (1.1) are proved to exist and be multiple by means of fixed point index theory. For this sake, we first demonstrate the properties of the Green’s function linked to SBVP (1.1).
Lemma 3.1. Assume that
,
. Then the problem
(3.1)
is equivalent to
where
(3.2)
Proof. Through the utilization of Lemma 2.2, (3.1) can be written as the following
where
. The boundary condition
(
) implies
. Therefore,
By the condition
, we have
Hence, the unique solution of (3.1) is
The proof is finished. 
Let
,
and
, the representation of the Green’s function
is exhibited by Figure 1.
Lemma 3.2. Assume that
,
. Then the problem
(3.3)
is equivalent to
Figure 1.
for
.
where
is defined by (3.2),
(3.4)
Proof. Applying the Hadamard fractional integral of order
to both sides of
it follows from Lemma 2.2 that
This together with
means
. Consequently,
(3.5)
In light of Lemma 2.3, it follows from boundary conditions of (3.3) that
(3.6)
(3.7)
Putting (3.6) and (3.7) into (3.5), one attains
where
By simple calculations, the following result can be obtained
As a result,
Finally, combining with Lemma 3.1, the unique solution of (3.3) is as follows:
The proof is completed. 
Let
and
, the representation of the Green’s function
is exhibited by Figure 2.
Figure 2.
for
.
Lemma 3.3. Let
be defined by (3.2), then
1)
is continuous on
;
2)
, for
;
3)
, for
;
4)
, for
.
Proof. Firstly, it is obvious that (1) holds. Now, we prove that (2) is true. It is easy to check that
for
. If
, then
Similarly,
for
. The previous analysis together with (3.2) means that
for
.
In addition, it is evident to see that
through simple calculations for
. If
, we have
Besides, for
,
So,
which implies that
is nondecreasing on
. That is to say, (3) holds.
Let
, then
If
, we have
Hence,
for
. Immediately
The proof is completed. 
Lemma 3.4. Let
be defined by (3.4), then
1)
is continuous on
;
2)
, for
;
3)
, for
;
4)
, for
.
Proof. It is evident that (1), (2) and (3) hold. Next, we verify that (4) holds. Let
, then
Moreover, combining with (3.4), we immediately get
This implies that (4) holds. The proof is finished. 
Furthermore, we consider the following SBVP:
(3.8)
By employing the same approach used in the proof of Lemma 3.1 and Lemma 3.2, the following lemmas can be acquired.
Lemma 3.5. Assume that
,
, and
. Then the problem (3.8) is equivalent to
where
(3.9)
(3.10)
and
The following conclusion can be established immediately.
Lemma 3.6. Assume that
. Then there exist positive constants
and
such that
Proof. Let
It is not difficult to confirm
according to the continuity of
and
on
. In addition, (3.2), (3.4), (3.9) and (3.10) imply that
Hence, it is easy to see that Lemma 3.6 holds. The proof is completed. 
Suppose that the following condition holds in the sequel.
(C1)
,
, and there exists
such that
where
.
Let
be a Banach space with the norm
for
. Let
, then Y is a Banach space with the norm
for
. Define a set
by
We can easily confirm that P is a cone of Y. As a matter of convenience, let
Then
Moreover, in order to overcome the singularity linked to SBVP (1.1), consider the following approximate boundary value problem:
(3.11)
where
Similarly, one can see that
is a solution of SBVP (3.11) if and only if
is a fixed point of the operator
, which is defined as follows:
where
Therefore, we mainly discuss that
has a nontrivial fixed point
in the following work.
For convenience, define a functional
as follows:
In addition, for any
, set
Let us list some assumptions which will be used later.
(C2) For any
, there exists
such that
(C3) There exist
and
such that
1)
, for
,
2)
,
.
(C4) There exists
such that
In what follows, some lemmas will be shown, which are important in this paper. Firstly, for any fixed
, the complete continuity of the operator
is demonstrated by means of Ascoli-Arzelà theorem.
Lemma 3.7 Assume that (C1) and (C2) holds. Then
is a completely continuous operator for
.
Proof. For any
,
, we have
and
which means
for
. In view of (C2), there exists
such that
Therefore,
which implies that
is well defined. For
, by (C1), one has
and
This implies that
.
Based on the aforementioned demonstration, it is clear that
is bounded. Since
is continuous on
, it follows that
is uniformly continuous on
. Hence, for any
, there exists
such that, for any
,
, if
, then
For any
,
, it follows from C1 that
Furthermore, in the same way as above, for any
, there exists
such that, for any
and
with
, one has
. That is to say,
is equicontinuous on
. The above analysis together with Ascoli-Arzelà theorem suggests that
is relatively compact from
to P.
At the end, according to the continuity of f and g, it is not hard to confirm that
is continuous on
. Hence,
is a completely continuous operator. The proof is finished. 
In the sequel, the following lemma is presented to prove that for any fixed
, approximate boundary value problem (3.11) has at least two nontrivial solutions by applying the fixed point index theory.
Lemma 3.8. Assume that (C1) - (C4) are satisfied. Then there exists
such that for
, the operator
has at least two nontrivial solutions in
and
respectively, where R is given by (C3).
Proof. (1) In view of Lemma 2.6, we start by proving that
, and
, for
,
, and
. Assuming the contrary, there exists
and
such that
. Therefore,
The definition of functional
together with (C3) implies
which contradicts with
. By incorporating Lemma 2.6, we can conclude that
(3.12)
(2) Next, we show
In fact, if there exists
and
such that
, then
(3.13)
Take the maximum for both sides of (3.13) in
. Then it is evident that
In light of Lemma 2.6, this implies that
(3.14)
(3) In the following, we choose a constant
as follows:
From (C4), there exists a constant
such that
Let
. Next, we claim that
As a matter of fact, if it is not true, then there exists
and
such that
. Since
According to the definition of M, we have
which is in contradiction with
. This means that
(3.15)
In view of (3.12), (3.14) and (3.15), combining with the additivity of the fixed point index, we can obtain
That is to say, for
, there exist
and
such that
and
. The proof is completed. 
The following theorem, as our main result in this paper, is proved in light of Ascoli-Arzelà theorem.
Theorem 3.1. Assume that (C1) - (C4) hold. Then SBVP (1.1) has at least two nontrivial solutions.
Proof. It is obvious that
and
are bounded.
Firstly, we prove that
is equicontinuous on
. Since
is uniformly continuous on
, for any
, there exists
such that, for any
,
, if
, then one has
In the same way as in Lemma 3.6, immediately
By following a similar process as above, we deduce that
is equicontinuous on
. This means that the set
is an equicontinuous family on
. Similarly, the set
is equicontinuous on
.
In addition, according to the Ascoli-Arzelà theorem, the sets
and
are relatively compact. As a result, there exist convergent subsequences. Without loss of generality, suppose that
and
themselves converge to
and
respectively. That is,
Hence, it follows from Lebesgue dominated convergence theorem that
and
are nontrivial solutions to SBVP (1.1).
Finally, we demonstrate
. We need to prove only that SBVP (1.1) has no solutions on
. Assuming the opposite, there exists
such that
which implies
. This leads to a contradiction. The proof of this theorem is completed. 
4. An Example
In this section, an example is presented to illustrate the main results.
Example 4.1. Consider the following SBVP of Hadamard fractional differential systems:
(4.1)
where
,
.
Conclusion: SBVP (4.1) has at least two nontrivial solutions.
Proof. SBVP (4.1) can be regarded as the form of SBVP (1.1), where
and
Clearly, (C1) holds. Moreover, from Lemma 3.1 and Lemma 3.2, one can get the following expressions:
(4.2)
and
It is easy to see
and
. In addition, for each
,
Take
, and this means that (C2) holds. Moreover, choose
and
By careful calculations, we can obtain
and
That is to say, (C3) holds. Furthermore, since
this implies that (C4) holds. Hence, according to Theorem 3.1, SBVP (4.1) has at least two nontrivial solutions. 
5. Conclusion
This study investigates a category of singular boundary value problems of Hadamard fractional differential systems involving p-Laplacian operator. Firstly, the sequences of approximate solutions to SBVP (1.1) are obtained by the fixed point index theory to overcome the singularity. Secondly, the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions are established. Finally, an illustrative example is provided to validate our main findings. Additionally, the introduction of Hadamard fractional derivative and the p-Laplacian operator deepens our comprehension of singular boundary value problems. This research also extends the current body of literature and highlights the potential to be applied in various fields.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the referee for his/her valuable suggestions and comments.