The need for the fractional operators

Abstract

Abstract In this review paper, I focus on presenting the reasons of extending the partial differential equations to space-time fractional differential equations. I believe that extending any partial differential equations or any system of equations to fractional systems without giving concrete reasons has no sense. The experiments agrees with the theoretical studies on extending the first order-time derivative to time-fractional derivative. The simulations of some processes also agrees with the theory of continuous time random walks for extending the second-order space fractional derivative to the Riesz–Feller fractional operators. For this aim, I give a condense review the theory of Brownian motion, Langevin equations, diffusion processes and the continuous time random walk. Some partial differential equations that are successfully extended to space-time-fractional differential equations are also presented.

Keywords

• Space-fractional Fokker–Planck operator
• Caputo-time-fractional operator
• Riesz–Feller space-fractional operator Mittag–Leffler function
• Continuous time random walk