An Historical Perspective on Fractional Calculus in Linear Viscoelasticity

The article provides an historical survey of the early contributions on the applications of fractional calculus in linear viscoelasticty. The period under examination covers four decades, since 1930's up to 1970's and authors are from both Western and Eastern countries. References to more recent contributions may be found in the bibliography of the author's book. This paper reproduces, with Publisher's permission, Section 3.5 of the book: F. Mainardi, Fractional Calculus and Waves in Linear Viscoelasticity, Imperial College Press - London and World Scienti?c - Singapore, 2010.Comment: 6 page

Fractional Calculus in Wave Propagation Problems

Fractional calculus, in allowing integrals and derivatives of any positive order (the term "fractional" kept only for historical reasons), can be considered a branch of mathematical physics which mainly deals with integro-differential equations, where integrals are of convolution form with weakly singular kernels of power law type. In recent decades fractional calculus has won more and more interest in applications in several fields of applied sciences. In this lecture we devote our attention to wave propagation problems in linear viscoelastic media. Our purpose is to outline the role of fractional calculus in providing simplest evolution processes which are intermediate between diffusion and wave propagation. The present treatment mainly reflects the research activity and style of the author in the related scientific areas during the last decades.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1008.134

A note on the equivalence of fractional relaxation equations to differential equations with varying coefficients

In this note we show how a initial value problem for a relaxation process governed by a differential equation of non-integer order with a constant coefficient may be equivalent to that of a differential equation of the first order with a varying coefficient. This equivalence is shown for the simple fractional relaxation equation that points out the relevance of the Mittag-Leffler function in fractional calculus. This simple argument may lead to the equivalence of more general processes governed by evolution equations of fractional order with constant coefficients to processes governed by differential equations of integer order but with varying coefficients. Our main motivation is to solicit the researchers to extend this approach to other areas of applied science in order to have a more deep knowledge of certain phenomena, both deterministic and stochastic ones, nowadays investigated with the techniques of the fractional calculus.Comment: 6 pqages 4 figure

Fractional Cable Model for Signal Conduction in Spiny Neuronal Dendrites

The cable model is widely used in several fields of science to describe the propagation of signals. A relevant medical and biological example is the anomalous subdiffusion in spiny neuronal dendrites observed in several studies of the last decade. Anomalous subdiffusion can be modelled in several ways introducing some fractional component into the classical cable model. The Chauchy problem associated to these kind of models has been investigated by many authors, but up to our knowledge an explicit solution for the signalling problem has not yet been published. Here we propose how this solution can be derived applying the generalized convolution theorem (known as Efros theorem) for Laplace transforms. The fractional cable model considered in this paper is defined by replacing the first order time derivative with a fractional derivative of order $\alpha\in(0,1)$ of Caputo type. The signalling problem is solved for any input function applied to the accessible end of a semi-infinite cable, which satisfies the requirements of the Efros theorem. The solutions corresponding to the simple cases of impulsive and step inputs are explicitly calculated in integral form containing Wright functions. Thanks to the variability of the parameter $\alpha$, the corresponding solutions are expected to adapt to the qualitative behaviour of the membrane potential observed in experiments better than in the standard case $\alpha=1$.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1702.0533

On the fractional Poisson process and the discretized stable subordinator

The fractional Poisson process and the Wright process (as discretization of the stable subordinator) along with their diffusion limits play eminent roles in theory and simulation of fractional diffusion processes. Here we have analyzed these two processes, concretely the corresponding counting number and Erlang processes, the latter being the processes inverse to the former. Furthermore we have obtained the diffusion limits of all these processes by well-scaled refinement of waiting times and jumpsComment: 30 pages, 4 figures. A preliminary version of this paper was an invited talk given by R. Gorenflo at the Conference ICMS2011, held at the International Centre of Mathematical Sciences, Pala-Kerala (India) 3-5 January 2011, devoted to Prof Mathai on the occasion of his 75 birthda