Characterizations of higher-order convexity properties with respect to Chebyshev systems

In this paper various notions of convexity of real functions with respect to Chebyshev systems defined over arbitrary subsets of the real line are introduced. As an auxiliary notion, a concept of a relevant divided difference and also a related lower Dinghas type derivative are also defined. The main results of the paper offer various characterizations of the convexity notions in terms of the nonnegativity of a generalized divided difference and the corresponding lower Dinghas type derivative.