2. Preliminaries and Known Results
In 1993, Czerwik [
5] introduced the concept of
b-metric space as follows:
Definition 1 ([
5])
. Let X be a nonempty set, be a given real number and let be a mapping such that for all the following conditions hold:- (b1)
iff;
- (b2)
;
- (b3)
.
Then,is called a b-metric space.
For some fixed points results in
b-metric space and its properties, we refer the reader to [
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18]. Recently, Parvaneh [
19] introduced the concept of extended
b-metric spaces as follows.
Definition 2 ([
19])
. Let X be a nonempty set. A function is a p-metric if there exists a strictly increasing continuous function with such that for all , the following conditions hold:- (p1)
iff
- (p2)
- (p3)
Then, the pairis called a p-metric space or an extended b-metric space.
A b-metric is a p-metric, when , while a metric is a p-metric, when .
Proposition 1 ([
19])
. Let be a metric space and let where is a strictly increasing continuous function with and . Then, ρ is a p-metric with . The following example is constructed using the above proposition.
Example 1. Letbe a metric space and let. Then, ρ is a p-metric with
In 2000, Branciari [
3] introduced the concept of generalized metric space (rectangular space) as follows:
Definition 3 ([
3])
. Let X be a nonempty set and let be a mapping such that for all and all distinct points , each distinct from a and b, the following satisfied:- (r1)
iff;
- (r2)
;
- (r3)
(rectangular inequality).
Then,is called a generalized metric space (g.m.s.) or rectangular space.
This metric attracted many authors and they obtain many results in this setting (see the references cited in [
20,
21,
22]). One can notice that each metric space is a generalized metric space, but the converse need not be true (see [
23,
24]). Several authors show that the topology of
g.m.s. need not be Hausdorff—see examples in [
25,
26,
27]. The topological structure of
g.m.s. is not compatible with the topology of ordinary metric space (see [
24] (Example 7)), so it is not easy to deal with
g.m.s. Therefore, this concept is very interesting for researchers.
Definition 4 ([
4])
. Let X be a nonempty set, be a given real number and let be a mapping such that for all and all distinct points , each distinct from a and b, the following satisfied:- (br1)
iff;
- (br2)
;
- (br3)
(b-rectangular inequality).
Then,is called a rectangular b-metric space.
The following are some easy examples of rectangular b-metric spaces.
Example 2 ([
25])
. Let be a and be a given real number. Let . Then, is a rectangular b-metric space with . Example 1.1 in [
27] clarifies that some properties of metric spaces need not be true in
g.m.s. (and so in rectangular
b-metric space).
Motivated by [
28], Hussain et al. [
29] used
to stand for the set of all functions
satisfying the following conditions:
- (1)
is non-decreasing;
- (2)
for each sequence , if and only if ;
- (3)
there exist and such that .
- (4)
for all .
Then, they introduced new concepts of generalized contractive mappings and obtained sufficient conditions for the existence of fixed points for mappings from these classes on complete metric spaces and complete
b-metric spaces. In particular, they claimed that their results extend theorems of Ćirić, Chatterjea, Kannan and Reich. On the other hand, Jiang et al., by removing the condition
, proved that in a metric space
,
defines a metric on
X (Lemma 1 of [
30]). They, also proved that the results in [
29] are not real generalizations of Ćirić contractive principle.
From now on, we denote by the set of all functions satisfying the following conditions:
is a continuous strictly increasing function;
for each sequence , if and only if .
Note that, in general, the conditions of do not guarantee that the metric d generates a new metric , due to the absence of condition .
Remark 1 ([
29])
. The following are some examples of functions in Θ
:,
,
,
,
,
,
.
Note thatdoes not belong to Ψ, since condition (4) does not satisfy.
We recall the following:
Theorem 1 ([
28], Corollary 2.1)
. Let be a complete metric space and let be a given map. Suppose that there exist and such thatThen, T has a unique fixed point.
Observe that the Banach contraction principle follows immediately from the above theorem.
3. New Definition and Basic Properties
We start this section by introducing the definition of Extended rectangular b-metric space.
Definition 5. Let A be a nonempty set,be a strictly increasing continuous function withfor allandand letbe a mapping such that for alland all distinct points, each distinct from a and b satisfies the following conditions:
- (br1)
iff;
- (br2)
;
- (br3)
(Ω-rectangular inequality).
Then,is called an extended rectangular b-metric space (ERbMS).
Note that for all and . Obviously, each rectangular b-metric space is an ERbMS with , . The following gives some more examples of extended rectangular b-metric spaces.
Example 3. Letbe a rectangular b-metric space with coefficientand letbe a strictly increasing continuous function withand. Let. Evidently, for alland for any two distinct points, each of which distinct from a and b, we obtain Thus,is an ERbMS with.
The convergence of sequences in ERbMS is introduced in a standard way. The following lemma will be needed in forthcoming results.
Lemma 1. Letbe an ERbMS with the function Ω. Then, we have the following:
- (i)
Suppose thatand are two sequences in A such that,and the elements ofare totally distinct. Then, we have - (ii)
Letbe a Cauchy sequence in A converging to a. Ifhas infinitely many distinct terms, then
for allwith.
Proof. (i) Using the
-rectangular inequality, we get that
and
Taking the lower limit as in the first inequality and the upper limit as in the second inequality, we obtain the desired result:
(ii) If
, then for infinitely many
,
and
Taking the lower limit as in the first inequality and the upper limit as in the second inequality, we obtain the desired result. □
As shown in Example 1.1 of [
27], a sequence in an ERbMS may have more than one limits. However, under some constraints, the sequence has a unique limit if it exists. The following lemma is a variant of [
28] (Lemma 1.10) and [
20] (Lemma 1) and will be used in the main results.
Lemma 2. Letbe an ERbMS and letbe a Cauchy sequence in A such thatwhenever. Then,can converge to at most one point.
Proof. Suppose that
converges to two different points, say
. Since
and
are distinct elements, as well as
a and
b, it is clear that there exists
such that
a and
b are different from
for all
. For
, the rectangular inequality implies that
Taking the limit as , it follows that , i.e., . A contradiction. □
In this paper, by an ordered ERbMS, understand a triple , where is a partially ordered set and is an ERbMS.
4. Main Results
The following Lemma is needed in a sequel.
Lemma 3. For each, we have.
Proof. Suppose that and let be a sequence in such that . Since is a strictly increasing function, we have . Thus, which contradicts the property . Therefore, . □
Let be an ERbMS with nontrivial function (i.e., ). Throughout this paper, denotes the class of all functions .
Theorem 2. Letbe a complete ordered ERbMS with nontrivial function Ω
. Let be an increasing mapping with respect to ⪯ such that there exists an element with . Suppose thatfor some , and all comparable elements , where Then, f has a fixed point.
Proof. Starting with the given
, put
. If
for some
, then
. Thus,
is a fixed point of
f. Therefore, we will assume that
for all
. Since
and
f is an increasing function, we obtain by induction that
Step I: We will show that
. Since
for each
, then, by Inequality (
1), we have
where
If
, then, from Inequality (
2), we have
which is a contradiction. Hence,
, so, from Inequality (
2),
Now, by definition of
, we have
,
. Hence,
and so
Letting
in Inequality (3) and using Equation (
4), we get
and since
, we obtain,
Step II: Now we will prove that
for
. Suppose first that
for some
, so we have
. By continuing this procedure, we conclude that
for all
. Then, Inequality (
1), Step I and being
,
imply that
If
, then we have
a contradiction. If
, then the above inequality becomes
a contradiction. Hence, from now on, we assume
for all
.
Step III: Now, we will prove that
is an
-Cauchy sequence. Suppose to the contrary that there exists
for which we can find two subsequences
and
of
such that
is the smallest index where
From Inequality (
8) and using the
-rectangular inequality, we get
Taking the upper limit as
, and using Equation (
5), the above inequality turns into
Again, by using Inequality (
8) and the
-rectangular inequality, we obtain
Taking the upper limit as
, using Equation (
5) and Inequality (
9), we find that
The rectangle inequality yields
and
Using Inequalities (
12) and (
13), the definition of
gives that
Taking the upper limit as
and using Equation (
5), Inequalities (
9) and (
11), we have
Again, taking the upper limit as
and combining Inequalities (
10) and (
11), the above inequality turns into
which is a contradiction. Consequently,
is an
-Cauchy sequence in
A. Therefore, the sequence
-converges to some
, that is,
.
Step IV: Now, we show that
c is a fixed point of
f. Suppose that
. Then, it follows that
differs from both
and
c for
n sufficiently large and
. Hence,
Thus,
a contradiction. Thus,
c is a fixed point of
f. □
The following examples illustrate the above obtained result.
Example 4. Letbe equipped with the order ⪯ given byand letbe given asandfor all. Then, one can easily check thatis a (complete) ordered ERbMS with. Defineby. Consider the mappingdefined as One easily can check that all the constraints of Theorem 2 are achieved with. The contractive Condition (1) is trivial except the case when,(or vice versa) when it reduces towhich implies that f has a (unique) fixed point γ. Note thatis neither a metric space, nor a rectangular metric space. For instance, Example 5. Letbe equipped with the following partial order ⪯: Define the rectangular metricbyand let. It is easy to see thatis a complete ERbMS. Define the self-map f byWe see that f is an ordered increasing mapping. Defineby,and. One can easily check that f satisfies the Condition (1). We will present the nontrivial cases as follows: - 1.
. Then, - 2.
or. Then,
Thus, all the conditions of Theorem 2 are satisfied and hence f has a fixed point. Indeed, 0 is the fixed point of f.
By introducing the following concept (which is adapted from Definition 2.2 of [
29]), we extend the result of Jleli and Samet [
28]. Furthermore, we obtain some new generalizations of the Banach contraction principle.
Definition 6. Letbe an ERbMS. The mappingis said to be a-contraction, whenever there exists a functionand functionswith;such thatfor all. Our second main result is the following:
Theorem 3. Letbe a complete ERbMS and letbe a-contraction. Then, f has a unique fixed point.
Proof. Let be arbitrary. Define the sequence by . Assume that (If for some , then is a fixed point of f), i.e., for all .
First, we will prove that
. Since
f is a
-contraction, using the Condition (14), we obtain that
Let
. Then,
Note that, for
,
. Thus,
. Hence,
. According to
we conclude that
Now, we will prove that
. Since
f is a
-contraction and using Condition (14), we obtain that
Taking the upper limit as
, we get
Since
, the above can only happen if
In order to show that
is an
-Cauchy sequence, suppose the contrary. Then, there exists
for which we can find two subsequences
and
such that
is the smallest index where
Rectangle inequality implies
Taking the upper limit as
, and using Equation (
15) and Inequality (
18), we get
From Inequality (
18), we have
which yields that
Combining rectangle inequalities and Inequality (
17), we get
Taking the upper limit as
and using Equation (
16), Inequalities (
20) and (
18), we get
On the other hand, we have
Now, taking the upper limit as
in the above inequality and using
and Inequality (
22), we have
which further implies, from Equation (
15), Inequalities (
18) and (
19), that
which is a contradiction. Thus, we have proved that
is an
-Cauchy sequence. The completeness of
A ensures that there exists
such that,
as
. Suppose that
; then, from Condition (14), we have
Taking the upper limit as
in the above inequality and using
and Equation (
15), we have
which is a contradiction, that is,
. Thus,
f has a fixed point. The uniqueness is straightforward. □
Taking various functions (see Remark 1), several corollaries of the previous theorem are obtained. For instance, taking , , , or , we get
Corollary 1. Letbe a complete ERbMS andbe a mapping such that one of the following conditions is satisfied for all:
whereare such thatfor alland. Then, f has a unique fixed point.
Taking
and
in (1) of the above result, we obtain Theorem 2.7 of [
29] in the framework of non-ordered ERbMS.
Example 6. Letbe endowed with the rectangular metricfor alland. Defineandbyand,for. Let. Then,. Therefore,, and Sinceandwe get Let. Then,, and Thus,. Hence, f is a-contraction and so all conditions of Corollary 1 are satisfied and f has a fixed point.