Various generalizations of metric spaces and fixed point theorems (Q2341013): Difference between revisions

The notion of a metric space was introduced by the famous French mathematician Maurice Fréchet in 1905 [\textit{M. Fréchet}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris 140, 772--774 (1905; JFM 36.0449.03)]. Possibly the oldest investigation of a generalization of a metric goes back to 1934 when a PhD student of Fréchet, the Serbian mathematician Đuro Kurepa introduced more abstract metric spaces [\textit{Đ. Kurepa}, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 198, 1563--1565 (1934; Zbl 0009.13205)], using an ordered normed space instead of the set of real numbers as the codomain of a metric. Later, such spaces were used by several mathematicians under various names such as pseudo-metric spaces, generalized metric spaces, vector-valued metric spaces, abstract metric spaces, cone metric spaces, \(K\)-metric spaces. \textit{J. S. Vandergraft} [SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 4, 406--432 (1967; Zbl 0161.35302)], \textit{B. Rzepecki} [Publ. Inst. Math., Nouv. Sér. 28(42), 179--186 (1980; Zbl 0482.47029)] and \textit{S.-D. Lin} [Indian J. Pure Appl. Math. 18, 685--690 (1987; Zbl 0622.47057)] reintroduced such spaces, calling them \(K\)-metric spaces. These spaces were again re-introduced in 2007 by \textit{L.-G. Huang} and \textit{X. Zhang} [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 332, No. 2, 1468--1476 (2007; Zbl 1118.54022)] under the name of cone metric spaces. A~cone metric is such a function that just replaces the set of real numbers with a Banach space \(E\) with a partial order with respect to a cone in \(E\) in the metric function. \textit{I. Beg} et al. [J. Nonlinear Sci. Appl. 3, No. 1, 21--31 (2010; Zbl 1203.54035)] and \textit{A. Azam} et al. [Fixed Point Theory Appl. 2010, Article ID 604084, 9 p. (2010; Zbl 1197.54057)] replaced the set of an ordered Banach space by a locally convex Hausdorff topological vector space in the definition of a cone metric and a generalized cone metric space. The celebrated Banach contraction principle is one of the cornerstones in the development of nonlinear analysis [\textit{St. Banach}, Fundam. Math. 3, 133--181 (1922; JFM 48.0201.01)]. This principle was extended and improved in many ways and various fixed point theorems were obtained. Let \((X,d)\) be a complete metric space and \(T\) be a self-map on \(X\) such that \(d(Tx,Ty) \leq {kd(x,y)}\) for some \(k\in{[0,1)}\) and all \(x,y\in {X}\). Then \(T\) has a unique fixed point \(x_{0} \in {X}\) and \(\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}T_{n} (x)= x_{0} \) for all \(x\in {X}\). Two usual ways of extending and improving the Banach contraction principle are to either extend the contraction condition to more general contraction conditions, or to replace the complete metric space \((X, d)\) by a certain generalized metric space. In the second mentioned direction, many types of generalized metric spaces were considered by modifying the metric axioms, such as \(2\)-metric spaces, partial metric spaces, \(G\)-metric spaces, cone metric spaces and many others. \textit{W.-S. Du} [Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl., Ser. A, Theory Methods 72, No. 5, 2259--2261 (2010; Zbl 1205.54040)] obtained a metric \(d_{ p} =\xi_{e}\circ p\) on a topological vector space valued cone metric space \((X,p)\), where \(\xi_{e}\) is a nonlinear scalarization function defined as \(\xi_{e} (y)=\inf\{r\in{\mathbb{R}}:y\in{re-K}\}\), \(y\in{E}\), and \(K\) is the pointed convex cone, \(\mathbb{R}\) is the set of real numbers, and proved a theorem which is equivalent to the Banach contraction principle. In the paper under review, the authors give a survey of recent results on reducing fixed point theorems to generalized metric spaces. They state that many generalized metric spaces are topologically equivalent to certain metric spaces or to previously generalized metric spaces, and the fixed point theory in these generalized metric spaces may be a consequence of the fixed point theory in certain metric spaces or in previously generalized metric spaces. The authors, however, neglect some references in which fixed point theorems were studied in TVS cone metric spaces, for example, the above mentioned reference of Azam et al., and [\textit{H. Çakallı} et al., Appl. Math. Lett. 25, No. 3, 429--433 (2012; Zbl 1245.54038)] who proved that the topology induced by a TVS cone metric coincides with the topology induced by an appropriate metric.