1. Introduction
Fixed point theory and its applications have become one of the most fascinating research subjects in nonlinear analysis. Researchers have put a lot of effort into this branch of mathematics in the last few decades because of its powerful application strengths. In many disciplines, fixed point theory has been utilized in various approaches. For instance, the existence of a solution to nonlinear integral equations (see [
1] for an example), the existence and uniqueness topics for a solution of differential equations, and integral equations involving Caputo-type fractional operators (see, for instance, [
2,
3]), problems in signal recovery under some obscured filters (see [
4,
5,
6,
7]), image restoration problems (see [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12] for more details), the study of the convergence of iterative methods (see [
13,
14,
15,
16,
17] for some decent work in this field), and many other branches of mathematics.
Recently, there have been various alternative ways for researchers to approach fixed point theory (see for example [
18,
19,
20]). One of the standard schemes is to extend the notion of contractions. In the celebrated paper [
21], Geraghty introduced an important class
of Geraghty functions
, satisfying
where
is a sequence in
. He also proved remarkable outcomes that extended Banach’s contraction principle. Generally, the concept of Geraghty functions itself can be further generalized to admissible Geraghty functions, which is one of the most outstanding subjects in fixed point theory. In particular, in 2014, Karapınar [
22,
23] extended the result in [
21] by employing admissible mapping for the contractive conditions on maps.
In 2017, Fulga and Proca [
24] introduced a new and significant generalization of contraction, known as the
-Geraghty contraction, which also extended the work presented in [
21]. In a similar vein, Martínez-Moreno et al. demonstrated common fixed point theorems for Geraghty type contraction mappings endowed with the monotone property with two metrics in their work [
25]. These contributions have undoubtedly provided valuable inspiration to the research community.
Building on these inspirations, Charoensawan and Atiponrat (refer to [
18]) and Charoensawan (refer to [
19]) presented some interesting existence and uniqueness results for common fixed point theorems concerning generalized contraction mappings with two metrics in metric spaces and JS-metric spaces endowed with a directed graph. This work further extended the scope of previous studies [
21,
25] in the field.
As a consequence of the above motivation, one of the main purposes of this paper was to amplify the previous concepts by enlarging the codomains of the renowned Geraghty functions and creating a new type of contraction equipped with the modified functions, which is called contraction. It is worth pointing out here that this new construction, in fact, beautifully extends several of the previous results in the literature.
To be more precise, in this work, we chose to utilize admissibility instead of requiring our spaces to be endowed with a directed graph. This decision has enabled us to extend our previous results, as mentioned in [
18,
19]. Additionally, it is worth noting that our current work slightly differs from our previous research (refer to [
2,
3,
26]) in that we are now considering generalized Geraghty functions rather than auxiliary functions. As generalized Geraghty functions and auxiliary functions are indeed quite different, we believe this modification has enhanced our approach and contributes to the novelty of the present study.
Our construction offers the existence results of coincidence points and common fixed points for any pair of mappings under additional conditions. Indeed, we organized the following work into four consecutive sections. In
Section 2, important background knowledge of the current work is given. To be more precise, we recall the key definitions and concepts necessary in our work. Additionally, the definition of
contraction for two mappings is introduced. Moreover, we show that the coincidence points and common fixed points of these mappings exist under some specific requirements. Also, an explicit example is illustrated to support the main results. In
Section 3, application in nonlinear fractional differential equations having nonlocal boundary conditions is explicitly demonstrated. Next, application in ordinary differential equations is thoroughly explained in
Section 4. Lastly, we finish our work by providing inclusions in
Section 5.
2. Main Results
For this part, we present a new contraction, which is called an -contraction, to prove the existence of a coincidence point and a common fixed point in complete metric spaces.
To begin with, we prove the following lemma, which will play a significant role in our main theorem. It is worth mentioning here that this lemma is a standard result in the literature (see, for instance, [
2,
3,
26]).
Lemma 1 ([
2,
3,
26])
. Let be a sequence in a metric space with a function such thatSuppose that contains two subsequences and together with such that for each , we have , where is the smallest number possible, satisfyingThen,Moreover, if is triangular, i.e., and imply for any , such thatthen Throughout this work, let denote a structure such that the following properties hold:
- (1)
X is a non-empty set;
- (2)
is a metric space;
- (3)
are self-mappings on X;
- (4)
.
Now, we introduce important classes of functions that will be related to our main results.
Let
be a continuous non-decreasing self-mapping on
such that, for all
,
Let us denote by
the set of all such functions
above.
Next, we recall another class of functions introduced by Ayari, see [
27], as follows.
Let
be a class of the mappings
such that
where
is a sequence in
. In the following definition, a special kind of contraction is considered.
Definition 1. On , the pair of functions will be called an-
contraction if there are and such that, for any with , we havewhere satisfies for all , Now, we prove a proposition that will be useful in proving our main results as follows.
Proposition 1. On , suppose further that all the following conditions hold:
- (1)
There is a sequence in X such that, for every , we have
- (i)
- (ii)
- (iii)
- (2)
is an -contraction.
Proof. By assumption,
is a sequence in
X such that, for every
,
whilst
Since
is an
-contraction, for any
,
Also, a direct calculation shows that
Here and subsequently, for each
, let
We have that
Now, suppose that
is not decreasing. Then, there exists
such that
. Thus, we have
Then, by inequality (
1), we have
Since for every
,
,
By the property of
, it follows that
Dividing inequality (
2) by
yields
. By the fact that
, we have
It is a contradiction. Therefore,
is decreasing. That is,
for all
.
Since
is a sequence that is bounded below, it must be a convergent sequence. So, there exists
such that
Suppose, on the contrary, that
. Thus, by the property of
, we have
As a result,
and
By (
1), it is true that
Therefore,
. Note that the definition of
implies
which contradicts our assumption. Thus, we obtain
This completes the proof. □
Next, we recall definitions of common fixed points and coincidence points as follows.
Definition 2. On , we will employ the following notations throughout this work.
- (1)
- (2)
denotes the set of all coincidence points of f and g, i.e., - (3)
denotes the set of all common fixed points of f and g, i.e.,
Before we continue to our main results, let us recall important definitions which are necessary for the proof of the main theorems below.
Definition 3 ([
28])
. Given and , the function f is said to be triangular α-admissible with respect to g if, for all ,- (1)
implies ;
- (2)
and imply .
Definition 4 ([
29])
. Given a metric space with , the maps f and g are called d-compatible iffor all sequences in X with . At this moment, we are ready to prove our most important theorem as follows.
Theorem 1. Given a structure , such that is a complete metric space, assume further that all the following four conditions hold:
- (1)
such that is closed;
- (2)
is an -contraction;
- (3)
f is triangular α-admissible with respect to g;
- (4)
At least one of the below requirements is fulfilled:
- (a)
f and g are continuous, and d-compatible; or
- (b)
for each sequence in X with for any , if , then for each natural number n.
Also, if , then
Proof. Suppose that
, we have
with
. By our assumption that
, there is
with
. Now, we may construct a sequence
in
X satisfying
If it is satisfied that, for some
,
, then
is clearly a coincidence point of
g and
f. As a consequence, we may assume from now on that
Next, because
and
f is triangular
-admissible with respect to
g, we obtain that
Obviously, mathematical induction provides
Due to the fact that
is an
-contraction, from (
3)–(
5) and Proposition 1, we get
Now, we prove that the sequence
needs to be Cauchy. Assume that
is not a Cauchy sequence. Hence, there will be
such that for all
, there are
such that
and
are subsequences of
and
with
being the tiniest number satisfying
By the above inequalities, (
6), and assumption (3), Lemma 1 implies
whilst
Using the fact that
is an
-contraction yields
where
Letting
in the above inequality and using (
6), we obtain that
By the property of
, we have
Also, inequality (
9) and the above fact imply
As a result,
Since
,
which is impossible. Thus, we get that
is Cauchy in the complete metric space
.
Using the assumption that
is a closed subspace of the complete metric space
, there exist
with
, which satisfy
Now, if assumption (a) is true, then
f and
g are
d-compatible. So, it is true that
Notice that
Taking
yields
due to (
11) and the continuity of
f and
g. Therefore,
. That is,
is a coincidence point of
f and
g.
Next, if assumption (b) is true, according to (
5) and (
10), we have
Now, we will show that a coincidence point of
f and
g is
x. Conversely, assume that
x fails to be a coincidence point of
f and
g. Consequently,
. Thence,
. Also, for all
,
As a result,
In fact, the definitions of
and
-contraction imply that
where
From the previous observation, using (
10) yields
Also, by the property of
, it follows that
Then, taking
in (
12) gives us that
We get that
. Since
,
which is impossible. Therefore,
. That is,
f and
g have
x as a coincidence point. □
It will be investigated in the succeeding theorem that including an additional condition in the previous result provides a pleasant outcome related to common fixed points.
Theorem 2. Under all the hypotheses of Theorem 1, assume further that
- (5)
For all , if , then .
If , then
Proof. To begin with, according to Theorem 1, we obtain
with
. Observe that, if
is also a coincidence point, then
because
and
, whilst
We will show further that
. Contrarily, assume that
. Hence,
By the additional condition (5) in our theorem,
. Since
is an
-contraction,
Thus,
. By the property of
, we have
It is a contradiction. As a result,
. This establishes the uniqueness of a coincidence point.
Next, set . By applying assumption (1) in Theorem 1 repeatedly, we get a sequence with for all . Now, because x is a coincidence point, we can assume that, for each , so that .
Now, letting
implies
By the proof of Theorem 2.8 in [
25], we obtain that
. □
In the next example, we illustrate the case that supports our theorems above.
Example 1. Suppose that , and is defined byMoreover, let and be defined byfor all . Next, suppose for each real number , and let such that It will be proved that all the below requirements are satisfied:
- (1)
is an -contraction;
- (2)
such that is closed;
- (3)
f is triangular α-admissible with respect to g;
- (4)
f and g are continuous, and d-compatible.
To start with, let us prove that is an -contraction.
(1) LetNote that for all . If , and , then it follows thatThus, requirement (1) is satisfied. (2) Clearly, and is closed.
(3) We will show that f is triangular α-admissible with respect to g.
First, let . Observe that , and . As a result, andwith being elements in . This implies . Second, let and ; we have , , andTherefore, . Thus, f is triangular α-admissible with respect to g. (4) It is not difficult to see that f and g are continuous. So, let us show that f and g must be d-compatible. Assume that is a sequence in X satisfyingIt follows that , which yields . Letting , we also get Finally, observe that . So, contains an element. Theorem 1 suggests that must be non-empty. It is also not hard to see that 0 is, in fact, a coincidence point.
3. Application in Fractional Differential Equations
Our main goal in this part was to impose the existence of a solution for some fractional differential equations, namely Caputo fractional boundary value problems of order with the integral-type boundary conditions, where for an integer .
To begin with, for each real number
, the Caputo derivative of fractional order
for any continuous function
is given by
where
is the ceiling function. In addition, the Riemann–Liouville integral operator of order
, denoted by
, is so that
It is worth mentioning that, when
, the notation
denotes the identity operator. Additionally, let the mapping
be such that
Our main interest in this part is a Caputo fractional differential equation such that
where
and
. Moreover, our boundary conditions will be
with
and
.
According to [
3], B. Wongsaijai et al. obtained a solution for the BVP (
13) and (
14) by considering a solution for the Volterra integral equation such that
Next, it is a standard scheme in the literature that we construct an integral operator as a means to achieve an appropriate fixed point problem. To this end, we define
by the equation
Here, we note that a solution of BVP (
13)–(
14) is given by
.
Next, we consider the following result.
Theorem 3. Given a complete normed space with , assume further that the following conditions (H)–(H) hold:
(H) For any and any with for each , it is satisfied thatwhere is a constant such thatand (H) There exists with for each
(H) For all and , (H) For any and , (H) For any sequence in such that for all and , Then, there is a fixed point of T. As a result, the BVP (13)–(14) has a solution . Proof. To start with, we note that the real-valued constant
above is well defined because each term involved is positive. Next, we define
such that
First, note that (H
) provides
Then, it is not hard to see that (H
) and (H
) imply that
f is triangular
-admissible with respect to
, where
I is the identity function on
. Furthermore, (H
) provides assumption
in Theorem 1. Next, notice that the condition (H
) implies for any
and
such that
, we get
That is,
where
Hence,
Simple calculations give
By (H
), we have
. Next, we define
and
such that
and
for all
. It can be checked that
and
. Now, for any
with
, the inequality (
15) yields
As we can see from the above proof, all those requirements of Theorem 1 are fulfilled. Consequently, there is a function
satisfying
. □
Let us end this section by pointing out that one of the natural directions in which to extend this work is to consider applications in other fractional order derivatives, which can be carried out in future studies.
4. Application in Ordinary Differential Equations
Our main results also have a beautiful impact on ordinary differential equations. To start with, suppose that
and consider a second order differential equation such that
and nonlocal conditions are
where
is a continuous function,
, and
is a given positive constant satisfying the nonresonance condition
. It is worth noting that the local conditions
and
can be considered as the limit case of (
17) when
. Additionally, the problem (
16) together with the boundary conditions (
17) become two-point boundary conditions
when
.
It is worth mentioning that the function
becomes a solution for (
16) if and only if it is a solution for the integral equation,
where
is defined by
Lemma 2. Let ξ be a positive constant real number, and let such that . Then, Proof. In the case
, we observe that
Similarly, when
, we have
as required. □
As a consequence of Lemma 2 above, it can be observed that
In addition, we recall that
is a complete normed space. So,
is a complete metric space, where for any
,
Next, we define
by the following equation:
Thus, the existence of a solution of (
16) can be considered as the existence of a fixed point of the operator
F above.
Theorem 4. Given , assume further that the following conditions (H)–(H) hold:
(H) For any and any with for each , it is satisfied thatwhereand (H) There is with for each
(H) For all and , (H) For all and ,Then, the BVP (16) has a solution. Proof. Consider
, defined by
Next, let
such that
Now, we will show that the pair , where I is the identity map on , is an -contraction.
Notice that the condition (H
) implies for any
and
such that
, we get
Next, we define
and
such that
and
for each
. It can be checked that
and
. Now, for any
with
, we have
Thus,
is an
-contraction. By assumptions (H
)–(H
), all those requirements of Theorem 1 are fulfilled. Consequently, there is a function
satisfying
. □
Remark 1. When , by taking , we see that In this case, let us define Green’s function
such that
In addition, define
by
Thus, the existence of a solution of (
16) when
can be considered as the existence of a fixed point of the operator
F above.
To finish this section, we indicate that our next corollary is a consequence of the preceding remark.
Corollary 1. Given , assume further that the following conditions (H)–(H) hold:
(H) For any and any with for each , it is satisfied thatwhere is defined as in Theorem 4. (H) There is with for each
(H) For all and , (H) For all and ,Then, the BVP (16) when has a solution.