Compactness of nonlinear integral operators with discontinuous and with singular kernels

This paper establishes compactness of nonlinear integral operators in the space of continuous functions. One result deals with operators whose kernel can have jumps across a finite number of curves, which typically arise from the study of ordinary differential equations with boundary conditions of local or nonlocal type. Several other results deal with operators whose kernels have a singularity, which arise from the study of fractional differential equations. We motivate the study of these integral equations by discussing some initial value problems for fractional differential equations of Caputo and Riemann-Liouville type. We prove a compact embedding theorem for fractional integrals in order to give a new treatment for the singular kernel case.