Metric Fixed Point Theory has proved a flourishing area of research for many mathematicians. This book aims to offer the mathematical community an accessible, self-contained account which can be used as an introduction to the subject and its development. It will be understandable to a wide audience, including non-specialists, and provide a source of examples, references and new approaches for those currently working in the subject.

The purpose of this contributed volume is to provide a primary resource for anyone interested in fixed point theory with a metric flavor. The book presents information for those wishing to find results that might apply to their own work and for those wishing to obtain a deeper understanding of the theory. The book should be of interest to a wide range of researchers in mathematical analysis as well as to those whose primary interest is the study of fixed point theory and the underlying spaces. The level of exposition is directed to a wide audience, including students and established researchers. Key topics covered include Banach contraction theorem, hyperconvex metric spaces, modular function spaces, fixed point theory in ordered sets, topological fixed point theory for set-valued maps, coincidence theorems, Lefschetz and Nielsen theories, systems of nonlinear inequalities, iterative methods for fixed point problems, and the Ekeland’s variational principle.

Diese Einfuhrung in das Gebiet der metrischen Raume richtet sich in erster Linie nicht an Spezialisten, sondern an Anwender der Methode aus den verschiedensten Bereichen der Naturwissenschaften. Besonders ausfuhrlich und anschaulich werden die Grundlagen von metrischen Raumen und Banach-Raumen erklart, Anhange enthalten Informationen zu verschiedenen Schlusselkonzepten der Mengentheorie (Zornsches Lemma, Tychonov-Theorem, transfinite Induktion usw.). Die hinteren Kapitel des Buches beschaftigen sich mit fortgeschritteneren Themen.

This book collects chapters on contemporary topics on metric fixed point theory and its applications in science, engineering, fractals, and behavioral sciences. Chapters contributed by renowned researchers from across the world, this book includes several useful tools and techniques for the development of skills and expertise in the area. The book presents the study of common fixed points in a generalized metric space and fixed point results with applications in various modular metric spaces. New insight into parametric metric spaces as well as study of variational inequalities and variational control problems have been included.

What is clear and easy to grasp attracts us; complications deter David Hilbert The material presented in this volume is based on discussions conducted in peri odically held seminars by the Nonlinear Functional Analysis research group of the University of Seville. This book is mainly addressed to those working or aspiring to work in the field of measures of noncompactness and metric fixed point theory. Special em phasis is made on the results in metric fixed point theory which were derived from geometric coefficients defined by means of measures of noncompactness and on the relationships between nonlinear operators which are contractive for different measures. Several topics in these notes can be found either in texts on measures of noncompactness (see [AKPRSj, [BG]) or in books on metric fixed point theory (see [GK1], [Sm], [Z]). Many other topics have come from papers where the authors of this volume have published the results of their research over the last ten years. However, as in any work of this type, an effort has been made to revise many proofs and to place many others in a correct setting. Our research was made possible by partial support of the D.G.I.C.y'T. and the Junta de Andalucia.

Metric fixed point theory encompasses the branch of fixed point theory which metric conditions on the underlying space and/or on the mappings play a fundamental role. In some sense the theory is a far-reaching outgrowth of Banach's contraction mapping principle. A natural extension of the study of contractions is the limiting case when the Lipschitz constant is allowed to equal one. Such mappings are called nonexpansive. Nonexpansive mappings arise in a variety of natural ways, for example in the study of holomorphic mappings and hyperconvex metric spaces. Because most of the spaces studied in analysis share many algebraic and topological properties as well as metric properties, there is no clear line separating metric fixed point theory from the topological or set-theoretic branch of the theory. Also, because of its metric underpinnings, metric fixed point theory has provided the motivation for the study of many geometric properties of Banach spaces. The contents of this Handbook reflect all of these facts. The purpose of the Handbook is to provide a primary resource for anyone interested in fixed point theory with a metric flavor. The goal is to provide information for those wishing to find results that might apply to their own work and for those wishing to obtain a deeper understanding of the theory. The book should be of interest to a wide range of researchers in mathematical analysis as well as to those whose primary interest is the study of fixed point theory and the underlying spaces. The level of exposition is directed to a wide audience, including students and established researchers.

Fixed point theory in probabilistic metric spaces can be considered as a part of Probabilistic Analysis, which is a very dynamic area of mathematical research. A primary aim of this monograph is to stimulate interest among scientists and students in this fascinating field. The text is self-contained for a reader with a modest knowledge of the metric fixed point theory. Several themes run through this book. The first is the theory of triangular norms (t-norms), which is closely related to fixed point theory in probabilistic metric spaces. Its recent development has had a strong influence upon the fixed point theory in probabilistic metric spaces. In Chapter 1 some basic properties of t-norms are presented and several special classes of t-norms are investigated. Chapter 2 is an overview of some basic definitions and examples from the theory of probabilistic metric spaces. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 deal with some single-valued and multi-valued probabilistic versions of the Banach contraction principle. In Chapter 6, some basic results in locally convex topological vector spaces are used and applied to fixed point theory in vector spaces. Audience: The book will be of value to graduate students, researchers, and applied mathematicians working in nonlinear analysis and probabilistic metric spaces.