An Analytical and Numerical Study on Fixed Point Theorems

Abstract

Fixed point theory has fascinated hundreds of researchers since 1922 with the celebrated Banach's fixed point theorem. There exists a vast literature on the topic and this is a very active field of research at present. Let X be a set and let T be a mapping from X intoX. A fixed point of Tis an element x EX such thatT(x) = x. In mathematics, a fixed-point theorem is a result saying that a function T will have at least one fixed point, under some conditions on T that can be stated in general terms. In other words, a fixed-point theorem is a theorem that asserts that every function that satisfies some given property must have a fixed point. Fixed point theorems give the conditions under which maps (single or multivalued) have solutions. Fixed point theory is a beautiful mixture, of analysis, topology, and geometry. If we have an equation whose explicit solution is not so easy to find, in that case we rewrite the equation in the form T(x) = x to find its solution by applying any suitable fixed-point theorem. This method can be applied not only to numerical equations but also to equations involving vectors or functions. In particular, fixed-point theorems are often used to prove the existence of solutions to differential equations. Fixed point theorems also play a fundamental role in demonstrating the existence of solutions to a wide variety of problems arising in social sciences, biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, physics and mathematics. For instance, the Banach [ 18, 40], Brouwer [ 18, 49] and Kakutani [ 18] fixed point theorems have been among the most-used tools in economics and game theory. Over the last 50 years the theory of fixed points has been revealed as a very powerful and important tool in the study of nonlinear phenomena.