On the bound of the Lyapunov exponents for the fractional differential systems

In recent years, fractional(-order) differential equations have attracted increasing interests due to their applications in modeling anomalous diffusion, time dependent materials and processes with long range dependence, allometric scaling laws, and complex networks. Although an autonomous system cannot define a dynamical system in the sense of semigroup because of the memory property determined by the fractional derivative, we can still use the Lyapunov exponents to discuss its dynamical evolution. In this paper, we first define the Lyapunov exponents for fractional differential systems then estimate the bound of the corresponding Lyapunov exponents. For linear fractional differential system, the bounds of its Lyapunov exponents are conveniently derived which can be regarded as an example for the theoretical results established in this paper. Numerical example is also included which supports the theoretical analysis.