AbstractIn this paper, some initial-boundary-value problems for the time-fractional diffusion equation are first considered in open bounded n-dimensional domains. In particular, the maximum principle well-known for the PDEs of elliptic and parabolic types is extended for the time-fractional diffusion equation. In its turn, the maximum principle is used to show the uniqueness of solution to the initial-boundary-value problems for the time-fractional diffusion equation. The generalized solution in the sense of Vladimirov is then constructed in form of a Fourier series with respect to the eigenfunctions of a certain Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem. For the onedimensional time-fractional diffusion equation $$(D_t^\alpha u)(t) = \frac{\partial } {{\partial x}}\left( {p(x)\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial x}}} \right) - q(x)u + F(x,t), x \in (0,l), t \in (0,T)$$ the generalized solution to the initial-boundary-value problem with Dirichlet boundary conditions is shown to be a solution in the classical sense. Properties of this solution are investigated including its smoothness and asymptotics for some special cases of the source function.
Some uniqueness and existence results for the initial-boundary-value problems for the generalized time-fractional diffusion equation
