Abstract
The main aim of this paper is to advise researchers in the field of Fixed Point Theory against an extended mistake that can be found in some proofs. We illustrate our claim proving that theorems in the very recent paper (Wang in Fixed Point Theory Appl. 2014:137, 2014) are incorrect, and we provide different corrected versions of them.
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1 Introduction and preliminaries
Let be a metric space, let k be a positive integer number, and let be the Cartesian product of k identical copies of X. The function defined, for all , by
is a metric on .
Let Φ denote the set of all continuous and strictly increasing functions , and Ψ denote the set of all functions such that , for all .
Inspired by Roldán et al.’s notion of a multidimensional fixed point (see [1–3]), Wang announced the following results in [4].
Theorem 1 (Wang [[4], Theorem 3.1])
Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be an isotone mapping for which there exist and such that, for all with ,
where is defined by (1). Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
As a consequence, she deduced the following result.
Theorem 2 (Wang [[4], Corollary 3.2])
Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist and such that, for all with ,
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
Remark 3 Theorems 1 and 2 are equivalent: Wang interpreted Theorem 2 as a corollary of Theorem 1 (taking ), but is also true that Theorem 1 is a particularization of Theorem 2 taking rather than .
We claim that Theorem 2 is false, providing the following counterexample. As a consequence, all results in [4] are not correct.
2 A counterexample
Let be the set of all natural numbers endowed with the usual order ≤ of real numbers and the Euclidean metric , for all . Define and by
Clearly, , (in fact, notice that , for all ). Furthermore, T is a continuous, nondecreasing mapping. Moreover, it verifies condition (2) because if are natural numbers, then is also a nonnegative integer number, so , and this proves that
(it is not necessary to assume that ). Any point verifies . However, T does not have any fixed point.
Remark 4 Notice that Wang’s results are valid if we add the assumption but, in this case, the results are not as attractive.
3 Some considerations of Wang’s paper
We write the following in order to advise researchers against the mistake in Wang’s proofs, which could be found on other papers.
In fixed point theory, given an operator , it is usual to consider a Picard sequence , for all . In the context of partially ordered metric spaces, this sequence must be monotone (for instance, nondecreasing). Applying the contractivity condition (2), it follows that, for all ,
Using the fact that φ is strictly increasing, we have , for all , which means that is a nonincreasing sequence of nonnegative real numbers. As a consequence, it is convergent. Let be its limit. In order to prove that , we reason by contradiction assuming that . Taking into account that
it is usual to take the limit in the previous inequality. As φ is continuous and by hypothesis, the author tried to deduce that
which is a contradiction. However, the equality
can be false: as in the previous counterexample, the sequence can be identically zero but the limit must take a positive value.
4 A suggestion to correct Wang’s paper
In this section, inspired by Wang’s paper [4], we suggest a new theorem in the context of partially ordered metric spaces. We also underline that one can easily state the same theorem in the frame of multidimensional fixed points. In fact, they are equivalent as is mentioned in Section 1.
Firstly, we give a modified version of the collection of auxiliary functions Ψ in the following way. Let denote the set of all lower semi-continuous functions such that . The following two lemmas will be useful in the proofs of the upcoming theorems.
Lemma 5 (See, e.g., [5])
Let be a metric space and let be a sequence in X such that
If is not a Cauchy sequence in , then there exist and two sequences and of positive integers such that, for all ,
Furthermore,
Lemma 6 Let , , and let be three sequences of nonnegative real numbers such that
If there exists such that , , , and , for all , then .
Proof Notice that
As , , , and ψ is continuous, we deduce that
As , for all , and ψ is lower semi-continuous, we deduce that
Therefore, . As , we conclude that . □
Theorem 7 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist , and such that
for all with , where
and
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
Proof By assumption, there exists such that . Without loss of generality, we assume that (the case can be treated analogously). Define an iterative sequence as for each . If for some , then we conclude the assertion of the theorem. So, assume that for each . Since T is nondecreasing, implies that . Recursively, we derive that
Letting and in (3) we get, for all ,
By elementary calculation we find that , and
If there exists some n such that , then (4) turns into
which is a contradiction because . Hence, (4) is equivalent to
for all . Since φ is a strictly increasing function, we have, for all ,
Thus, is a decreasing sequence that is bounded from below. Thus, there exists such that . We assert that . Suppose, on the contrary, that . Letting in (5) and regarding the properties of the auxiliary functions φ, ϕ, we derive that
Hence, and, as a result, . Thus,
In what follows, we prove that is a Cauchy sequence. Suppose, on the contrary, that is not Cauchy. By Lemma 5, there exist and two sequences and of positive integers such that, for all ,
and
As is nondecreasing, , for all . Applying the contractivity condition (3), it follows, for all , that
where
and
As ,
Furthermore, by (6), we have
Using the sequences
Lemma 6 guarantees that , which is a contradiction. As a consequence, we must admit that is a Cauchy sequence in . As it is complete, there exists such that
If T is continuous, it is clear that z is a fixed point of T.
Suppose that condition (b) holds. Hence, as is nondecreasing and converges to z, we have , for all . Due to (3), we have, for all ,
where
and
Letting in (7), we get
so and . As a consequence, , which completes the proof. □
The following corollary follows from Theorem 7 using .
Corollary 8 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist , such that
for all with , where
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
In the next result, we take φ as the identity mapping on , which clearly belongs to Φ.
Corollary 9 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exists such that
for all with , where
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
The following result is not a direct consequence of Theorem 7, but its proof is verbatim the proof of Theorem 7. Thus, we skip it.
Theorem 10 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist , , and such that
for all with , where
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
If in the previous theorem, we obtain the following result.
Corollary 11 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist , such that
for all with . Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
If we take φ as the identity mapping on , we derive the following result.
Corollary 12 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exists such that
for all with . Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
In the sequel we suggest another theorem by changing the properties of the auxiliary functions in the following way.
Let denote the set of all functions such that
-
1.
and whenever .
-
2.
for any , where is the left limit of φ at t, where .
Theorem 13 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist and , such that
for all with , where
and
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
The proof is analog to the proof of Theorem 7 and, hence, we skip it.
Remark 14 As in Theorem 13, by changing the property of the auxiliary function, we get various results (see, e.g., [6–9] and related references therein).
5 Fixed point theorems from (one dimensional) fixed point to multidimensional fixed point
As discussed in Remark 3, multidimensional fixed point theorems are equivalent to (one dimensional) fixed point theorems. Thus, Theorem 7 can be translated in a multidimensional case as follows.
Theorem 15 Let be a partially ordered set and suppose that there is a metric d on X such that is a complete metric space. Let be a nondecreasing mapping for which there exist , , and such that
for all with , where
and
Suppose either
-
(a)
T is continuous or
-
(b)
is regular.
If there exists such that , then T has a fixed point.
In similar way, we may state the analog of Corollary 8, Corollary 9, Theorem 10, Corollary 11, Corollary 12.
6 Applications
In this section, based on the results in [10], we propose an application to our results. Consider the integral equation
where . We introduce the following space:
equipped with the metric
It is clear that is a complete metric space. Furthermore, can be equipped with the partial order ⪯ as follows:
Due to [11], we know that is regular.
In what follows we state the main result of this section.
Theorem 16 We assume that the following hypotheses hold:
-
(i)
and are continuous,
-
(ii)
for all and with , we have
-
(iii)
there exists a continuous function such that
for all and with ,
-
(iv)
.
Then the integral (8) has a solution .
Proof We, first, define by
We first prove that T is nondecreasing. Assume that . From (ii), for all , we have . Thus, we get
Now, for all with , due to (iii), we derive that
On account of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality in the last integral above, we find that
Taking (iv) into account, we estimate the first integral in (9) as follows:
For the second integral in (9) we proceed in the following way:
By combining the above estimation, we conclude that
It yields
or equivalently,
Now, if choose and , then we get
for all with . Hence, all hypotheses of Corollary 11 are satisfied. Thus, T has a fixed point which is a solution of (8). □
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Acknowledgements
Antonio-Francisco Roldán-López-de-Hierro has been partially supported by Junta de Andalucía by project FQM-268 of the Andalusian CICYE.
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Agarwal, R.P., Karapınar, E. & Roldán-López-de-Hierro, AF. Some remarks on ‘Multidimensional fixed point theorems for isotone mappings in partially ordered metric spaces’. Fixed Point Theory Appl 2014, 245 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-1812-2014-245
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-1812-2014-245