Fixed point equations for superlinear operators with strong upper or strong lower solutions and applications

It is well known that sublinear operators and superlinear operators are two classes of important nonlinear operators in nonlinear analysis and dynamical systems. Since sublinear operators have only weak nonlinearity, this advantage makes it easy to deal with them. However, superlinear operators have strong nonlinearity, and there are only a few results about them. In this paper, the convergence of Picard iteration for the superlinear operator $A$ is obtained based on the conditions that the fixed point equation $Ax=x$ has a strong upper solution and a lower solution (or alternatively, an upper solution and a strong lower solution). Besides, the uniqueness of the fixed point of strongly increasing operators as well as the global attractivity of strongly monotone dynamical systems are also discussed. In addition, the main results are applied to monotone dynamics of superlinear operators and nonlinear integral equations. The method used in our work develops the traditional method of upper and lower solutions. Since a strong upper (upper) solution and a lower (strong lower) solution are easily checked, the obtained results are effective and practicable in the study of nonlinear equations and dynamical systems. The main novelty is that this paper provides new fixed point results for increasing superlinear operators and the obtained results are applied to strongly monotone systems to investigate their global attractivity.