The aim of this paper is to seek
necessary and sufficient conditions on the linear operator A in a linear topological
space in order that the Cauchy problem for the equation U(α)− AU = T
should be well set in the sense of distributions (see definition in §2). Here
0 < α < ∞,U(α) is the fractional derivative of U of order α. Such conditions
are obtained for α integer ≧ 3 and then for any α > 0, this time with the
additional assumption of (at most) exponential growth of the solutions at
infinity.