1. Introduction
Integral inequalities such as Hardy’s inequality, Steffensen’s inequality, and Ostrowski’s inequality are topics of interest of many Mathematicians since their pronouncement. Several generalizations of these inequalities have been proved for different classes of functions, such as convex functions, n-convex functions, and other types of functions, for example see [
1,
2,
3,
4]. Moreover, integral inequalities have been proved for different integrals, such as Jensen-steffensen inequality for diamond integral and bounds of related identities have been obtained in [
5]. Other than that, Hardy’s inequality for fractional integral on general domains have been proved in [
6].
Steffensen’s inequality was proved in [
7]: if
, with
be a decreasing function and function
f having range in
, then
A massive literature dealing with several variants and improvements of Steffensen’s inequality can be seen in [
8,
9] and references therein. A well known generalization of Steffensen’s inequality has been presented in [
4]. Several results of [
4] have been recently generalized by using non-bounded Montgomery’s identity in [
10]. To proceed further, we recall a nice generalization of Steffensen’s inequality proved by Pečarić, see [
11].
Theorem 1. Let be a increasing function (J is an interval in such that ) and be increasing and differentiable function.
- (i)
- (ii)
If , then (2) holds in reverse direction.
Remark 1. We can consider f to be absolute continuous instead of differentiable function and the suppositions of Theorem 1 can also be weakened. In fact for an increasing function ψ, the function is well defined and satisfies at all except the set of points with measure zero. One can substitute in (2) (see [12] (Corollary 20.5)), provided that f is absolutely continuous increasing function, thereforewhere the last inequality holds when . In [1], substitutions presented conclude that (3) yields (2) and generalization of a result proved by Rabier in [4], which gives (1).
Recently, Fahad et al. introduced new generalization [
1] of (
1) by extending the results of [
4,
11]. By using Hermite interpolation, several inequalities related to the results of [
1,
4,
11] have also been proved in [
13]. We consider the important conclusions given in [
1].
Corollary 1. Suppose , two differentiable functions with f non-decreasing as well, where J is an interval containing , and . If ψ is convex, then:
- (i)
If f satisfies condition given in Theorem 1, then - (ii)
(4) holds in reverse direction, if f satisfies condition given in Theorem 1.
Corollary 1 gives (
3) and therefore leads to (
1), (
2) and generalization of Rabier’s result in [
4]. Next we narrate some further important results of [
1].
Corollary 2. Consider be differentiable convex function with and be another function.
- (i)
If for every , then - (ii)
(5) holds reversely if for every .
Corollary 3. Consider ψ and f as defined in Corollary 2 and let and denote .
- (i)
If for every , then - (ii)
(6) holds reversely if for every .
Following two lemmas will be useful in our construction as well, see [
14,
15].
Lemma 1. For a function , we have:whereand Lemma 2. Let , thenandwhere Throughout the calculations in the main results, we will use corresponding to for , and for , we use and , respectively.
We also require the classical Fink’s identity given in [
16]:
Lemma 3. Let and , and is absolutely continuous on .
where is given by: Divided differences are fairly ascribed to Newton, and the term “divided difference” was used by Augustus de Morgan in 1842. Divided differences are found to be very helpful when we are dealing with functions having different degrees of smoothness. The following definition of divided difference is given in [
8] (p. 14).
Definition 1. The nth-order divided difference of a function at mutually distinct points is defined recursively by It is easy to see that (
26) is equivalent to
The following definition of a real valued convex function is characterized by
nth-order divided difference (see [
8] (p. 15)).
Definition 2. A function is said to be n-convex if and only if for all choices of distinct points , holds.
If this inequality is reversed, then ψ is said to be n-concave. If the inequality is strict, then ψ is said to be a strictly n-convex (n-concave) function.
Remark 2. Note that 0-convex functions are non-negative functions, 1-convex functions are increasing functions, and 2-convex functions are simply the convex functions.
The following theorem gives an important criteria to examine the
n-convexity of a function
(see [
8] (p. 16)).
Theorem 2. If exists, then ψ is n-convex if and only if .
In this article, we use Fink’s identity, Montgomery identities, and Green functions to prove some identities related to Steffensen’s inequality. By using these identities we obtain a generalization of (
4). In addition, we construct new identities which enable us to prove generalizations of inequalities (
5) and (
6) as one can obtain Classical Hardy-type inequalities from them, see [
1]. We use Čebyšev functional to construct new bounds of Gr
ss and Ostrowski-type inequalities. Finally, we give several applications of our work.
2. Main Results
For our convenience, we use the following notations and assumptions:
() For , , let be n times differentiable function with absolutely continuous on .
() For , , let be n times differentiable function with and absolutely continuous on .
The first part of this section is the generalization of (
4). For this, we start with the following theorem:
Theorem 3. Consider () with f be as in Corollary 1 then:
- (a)
For , we have: - (b)
Proof. - (a)
We first prove by fixing
, other cases for
can be treated analogously. Utilizing (
7) and (
17) for
ψ and
respectively, we get
Simplifying and employing Fubini’s theorem, we get
Now by replacing
n with
in (
24) for
, we have:
Rest follows from simplification and Fubini’s theorem.
- (b)
Using assumption and employing a similar method as in .
□
From the next two theorems we get a generalization of Steffensen’s inequality and its reverse by generalizing (
4) and its reverse.
Theorem 4. Consider () with f be as in Corollary 1 and let - (a)
If ψ is n-convex, then for each (where for , we have: - (b)
If is n-convex, then for each j, (29) holds in the reverse direction.
Proof. For each
the function
is convex and differentiable. Since
f is non-decreasing with
, therefore Corollary 1
gives
On the other hand, if
ψ is n-convex (
is n-convex), then
Therefore, given assumption together with n-convexity of
ψ implies
. The rest follows from (
27). □
Theorem 5. Consider () for even n and f as in Corollary 1 . Then
- (a)
If ψ is n-convex, then (29) holds.
- (b)
If is n-convex, then the reverse of (29) holds.
- (c)
Let (29) (reverse of (29)) holds andThen
Proof. We define
Clearly
for even
Consequently, we get (
28), n-convexity of
ψ (
), and Theorem 4
(Theorem 4
yields (
29) (and its reverse).
By definition of
and assumption on
Corollary 1
gives
Therefore, by using (
30) and
in (
29) (and its reverse), we get
, which completes the proof. □
Now, we prove the following theorem which enables us to prove a generalization of (
5).
Theorem 6. Consider and let f be as in Corollary 2 then:
Proof. We give proof of our results by fixing
, and other cases can be proved in the similar way. By using (
7) and (
17) for
ψ and
respectively and applying assumption
, we get
Now replacing
n with
in (
24) for
and simplifying we get the required identities. □
Our next result gives a generalization of (
5).
Theorem 7. Consider (), f as in Corollary 2 and letthen the following hold: - (a)
If ψ is n-convex, then
- (b)
Inequalities (32)–(35) are reversed provided that is n-convex.
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 4 except using Theorem 6 and Corollary 2 . □
Theorem 8. Consider () for even n and f be as in Corollary 2 . Then
- (a)
If ψ is n-convex, then (32)–(35) hold.
- (b)
If is n-convex, then the reverse of (32)–(35) holds.
- (c)
If any of (32)–(35) (reverse of (32)–(35)) hold and Then
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 5 except using Theorem 7 and Corollary 2 . □
Next we give some generalized identities considering (
6).
Theorem 9. Consider and let f, λ and Λ be as in Corollary 3 then:
Proof. We give a proof of our results by fixing
, and other cases can be proved in a similar way. By using (
7) and (
17) for
ψ and
respectively and applying assumption
, we get:
Since
, therefore
The rest follows from (
24). □
Next, we present a generalization of (
6).
Theorem 10. Consider and let f, λ, Λ
be as in Corollary 3 and (31) holds, then: - (a)
If ψ is n-convex, then
- (b)
Inequalities (37)–(40) are reversed provided that is n-convex.
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 4 except using Theorem 9 and Corollary 3 . □
Theorem 11. Consider for even n and let f, λ, and Λ be as in Corollary 3 . Then
- (a)
If ψ is n-convex, then (37)–(40) hold.
- (b)
If is n-convex, then the reverses of (37)–(40) hold.
- (c)
If any of (37)–(40) (reverse of (37)–(40)) hold and (36) is valid. Then
Proof. The proof is similar to that of Theorem 5 except using Theorem 10 and Corollary 3 . □
4. Monotonic Steffensen’s-Type Functionals
The notion of
-convex function at a point was introduced in [
18]. In the current section, we define some linear functionals from the differences of the generalized Steffensen’s-type inequalities. By proving monotonicity of these functionals, we obtain new inequalities which contribute to the theory of more generalized class of functions, i.e.,
-convex functions at a point. Below is the definition of
-convex function at point, see [
18].
Definition 3. Let be an interval, and . A function is said to be -convex at point ξ if there exists a constant such that the functionis n-concave on and n-convex on .
Pečarić et al. in [
18] studied necessary and sufficient conditions on two linear functionals
and
so that the inequality
holds for every function
f that is
-convex at point
ξ. In this section, we define some linear functionals and obtained certain inequalities associated with these linear functionals. Let
be even,
be
n times differentiable function with
absolutely continuous on
. Let
and
, where
. Let
and
be increasing with
for
. For
, we construct:
and
Theorem 5 enables for (and for ), provided that ψ is n-convex. Furthermore, Theorem 5 enables for (and for ), provided that is n-convex.
Theorem 17. Let be as defined above and be -convex at a point ξ for even . If for all and for , where then:for Proof. Since
ψ is
-convex, it follows from Definition 3 that there exist
such that
is
n-concave on
and n-convex on
Therefore, for each
, we have
Since , therefore , which completes the proof. □
Remark 4. We may proceed further by defining linear functionals with the inequalities proved in Theorems 8 and 11. Moreover, by proving monotonicity of new functionals we extend the inequalities in Theorems 8 and 11.