
Recepción: 17 Noviembre 2020
Revisado: 14 Junio 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15388/namc.2022.27.25193
Abstract: In this manuscript, we generalize, improve, and enrich recent results established by Budhia et al. [L. Budhia, H. Aydi, A.H. Ansari, D. Gopal, Some new fixed point results in rectangular metric spaces with application to fractional-order functional differential equations, Nonlinear Anal. Model. Control, 25(4):580–597, 2020]. This paper aims to provide much simpler and shorter proofs of some results in rectangular metric spaces. According to one of our recent lemmas, we show that the given contractive condition yields Cauchyness of the corresponding Picard sequence. The obtained results improve well-known comparable results in the literature. Using our new approach, we prove that a Picard sequence is Cauchy in the framework of rectangular metric spaces. Our obtained results complement and enrich several methods in the existing state-of- art. Endorsing the materiality of the presented results, we also propound an application to dynamic programming associated with the multistage process.
Keywords: rectangular metric space, triangular .-admissible, .-regular with respect to ., dynamic programing, fixed point.
1 Introduction and preliminaries
It is well known that the Banach contraction principle [5] is one of the most essential and attractive results in nonlinear analysis and mathematical analysis in general. The whole fixed point theory is a significant subject in different fields as geometry, differential equations, informatics, physics, economics, engineering, and many others (see [8, 23, 25, 27]). After the solutions are guaranteed, the numerical methodology has been adopted to obtain the approximated solution [28].
In 2000, generalized metric spaces were introduced by Branciari [6] in such a way that the triangle inequality is replaced by the quadrilateral inequality d(x, y) ≤ d(x, z) + d(z, u) + d(u, y) for all pairwise distinct points x, y, z, and u. Any metric space is a generalized metric space, but in general, generalized metric space might not be a metric
space. Various fixed point results were established in such spaces (see [3,4,7,9–13,16,26] and references therein).
In this paper, we will discuss some results recently established in [7]. Firstly, we propound some basic notions and definitions, which are necessary for the subsequent analysis.
Definition 1. Let
be a nonempty set, and let
satisfy the following conditions: for all
and all distinct
each of them different from
and
,
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
Then the function d is called a rectangular metric, and the pair (M, d) is called a rectan- gular metric space (in short RMS).
Notice that the definitions of convergence and the Cauchyness of sequences in rectan- gular metric spaces are similar to those found in the standard metric spaces. Also, a rectangular metric space (M, d) is complete if every Cauchy sequence in
is convergent.
Samet et al. [24] introduced the concept of an
-contractive mapping and proved fixed point theorems for such mappings. Karapınar [13] extended the concepts given in [24] to obtain the existence and uniqueness of a fixed point of
-contraction mappings in the setting of rectangular metric spaces. After that, Salimi et al. [23] introduced a modified
-contractive mapping and obtained some fixed point theorems in the complete metric spaces. Alsulami et al. [1] established some fixed point theorems for an
-rational-type contractive mapping in the context of rectangular metric spaces.
Let
be the family of all functions
such that
is nonde- creasing and continuous (so-called an altering distance function) and
if and only if
(for more details, see [15, 28]).
Definition 2. (See [23].) Let
be a self-mapping on a metric space (M, d), and let
be two functions. Then
is called an
-admissible mapping with respect to
if
implies that
for all 
If
for all
, then
is called an
-admissible mapping.
is said to be a triangular
-admissible mapping if for all
, the following holds:
and
implies
Otherwise, a rectangular metric space (M, d) is said to be an
-regular with respect to
if for any sequence
in
such that
for all
and
implies 
For more details on the triangular
-admissible mapping, see [14, pp. 1, 2]. In this paper the following results play an important role.
Lemma 1. (See [14, Lemma 7]). Let
be a triangular
-admissible mapping. Assume that there exists
such that
Define a sequence 
Then

The following definition is due to [2], where the class of
-functions is introduced.
Definition 3. A
-function
is a continuous function such that for all 
(i)
(ii)
The letter
will denote the class of all
-functions. For detailed description and examples of
-functions, we refer the reader to [2, 7].
The following remark plays a significant role in the rest of this article.
Remark 1. It is worth to mention that for each
-function,
and
Theorem 1. Let (M, d) be a complete Hausdorff rectangular metric space, and let T : M → M be an α-admissible mapping with respect to η. Suppose there exist F ∈ C and ψ, φ ∈ Ψ such that, for p, r ∈ M,

where

Assume that:
(i) there exists
for which 
(ii) for all
and
implies 
(iii)
is continuous or
is
-regular with respect to
.
Then there exists
such that
for some
is a periodic point. If in addition,
for each periodic point x, then
has a fixed point.
Theorem 2. To ensure the uniqueness of the fixed point in Theorem ., the authors add the following condition:

Taking
the authors obtained the following corollaries.
Corollary 1. Let (M, d) be a Hausdorff and complete rectangular metric space, and let
be an
-admissible mapping with respect to
. Assume that there exists
such that, for
,

where

Also suppose that the following assertions are contended:
(i) there exists
(ii) for all 


(iii) T is continuous or M is α-regular with respect to η.
Then
has a periodic point
If in addition,
holds for each periodic point, then
has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
then the fixed point is unique.
Taking
in Corollary 1, the authors obtained the following result.
Corollary 2. Let (M, d) be a Hausdorff and complete rectangular metric space. Let
be an
-admissible mapping with respect to
. Assume that there exists
such that, for 

where

Also suppose that the following assertions hold:
(i) there exists
(ii) for all 


(iii) T is continuous or M is α-regular with respect to η.
Then
has a periodic point
If in addition,
for each periodic point, then
has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
then the fixed point is unique.
Consider
in Corollary 2.
Corollary 3. Let (M, d) be a Hausdorff and complete rectangular metric space. Let
be an
-admissible mapping with respect to
such that, for 

where
is the same as in Corollary 2. Suppose also that the following hold:
(i) there exists
(ii) for all 



(iii) T is continuous or M is α-regular with respect to η.
Then
has a periodic point
.If in addition,
for each periodic point, then
has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
then the fixed point is unique.
In the sequel the authors in [7] gave two examples, which support their obtained theoretical results. In the next example, rectangular metric space (M, d) is not Hausdorff, and the mapping
has no fixed point. So the hypothesis that (M, d) is Hausdorff does not guarantee the existence of a fixed point.
Example 1. Let
and
Define
as follows:

Then (M, d) is a complete rectangular metric space. Note that (M, d) is not Hausdorff because there exists no
such that
Given
as

Define
by

For their convenience, the authors in [7] use the following symbols:

Define the functions
as
and
and
respectively. Using the obtained table, the authors easily checked that the following condition is valid.

However, the given example is not correct, namely, it does not satisfy all the conditions of Theorem 2 [7, Thm. 1]. It is easy to check that
is not
-admissible with respect to
. Indeed,

while

Further,
is not continuous. Indeed,
but 

Also,
is not defined, we do not know whether (M, d) is
-regular.
The following two lemmas, in the setting of rectangular metric spaces, are modifica- tions of a well-known result in metric spaces (see, e.g., [22, Lemma 2.1]). Many known proofs of fixed point results in rectangular metric spaces become much simpler and shorter using both these lemmas.
Lemma 2. (See [12].) Let (M, d) be a rectangular metric space, and let
be a sequence in it with distinct elements
Suppose that
and
tend to 0 as
and that
is not a Cauchy sequence. Then there exist
and two sequences
and
of positive integers such that
and the following sequences tend to 

Lemma 3. Let 
be a Picard sequence in rectangular metric space (M, d) inducing by the mapping
and initial point
. If 
for all then
whenever 
Proof. Let
for
some with
, then
and we acquire

which is a contradiction.
In the proof of our results, the following exciting and significant proposition is used in the context of rectangular metric spaces.
Proposition 1. (See [17, Prop. 3].) Suppose that
is a Cauchy sequence in a rectangular metric space (M, d), and suppose
Then for all 
In particular,
does not converge to 
2 Some improved results
In this section, we generalize and improve Theorem 1 along with its corollaries. Obtained generalizations extend the result in several directions. It may be noted: we use only one function
instead of two
and
as used in [8, Defs. 2.3, 3.1.]. This is possible according to the results enunciated in [21, p. 2].
Note that we neither assume that the rectangular metric space (M, d) is Hausdorff, nor that the mapping . is continuous.
The authors [1, p. 6, line 6+)] claimed that the sequence
in rectangular metric space (M, d) is a Cauchy sequence if
for all
However, it is ambivalent. We rectify the proof that the sequence
is Cauchy. For more details,
we refer the reader to the noteworthy and informative article [20, p. 7].
Our first new result in this paper is the following.
Theorem 3. Let (M, d) be a complete rectangular metric space, and let
be a triangular
-admissible mapping, where
Assume there exist
and
such that, for
(1)where

Also, suppose that the following assertions are satisfied:
(iv) there exists
such that
(v)
is continuous or .M, d. α-regular.
Then T has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
then the fixed point is unique.
Proof. Given
such that
(2)Define a sequence
in
by
for all
If
for some
, then
is a fixed point of
, and the proof is completed in this case.
From now, suppose that
for all
Using (2) and the fact that
is an
-admissible mapping, we have

By induction we get

In the first step, we will show that the sequence
is nonincreasing and 
(3)Where

Utilizing Remark 1 and condition (3), it follows that
(4)If max
we get a contradiction. Indeed, equation (4) implies

Therefore, we get that
for all
This means that there exists
then from (3) and Remark 1 we get

which is a contradiction. Hence 
Further, we show that
Firstly, we have
because
is a triangular
-admissible mapping. Therefore, we arrive at

Where

Since there exists
such that for 

And

also,
we obtain

that is,

Hence, for
according to Remark 1, it follows that

This amounts to say that, for 

Now, we get

Hence, we have

Suppose that

Then we acquire the following:

that is,

which is a contradiction. Hence, it follows that 
In order to prove that the sequence
is a Cauchy sequence, we use Lemma 2. According to Lemma 1,
if
then putting in (1)
we obtain
(5)Where

Now, since F,
and
are continuous, taking limit
in (5), and utilizing Remark 1, we obtain

which is a contradiction. Hence the sequence
is a Cauchy sequence. Since (M, d) is a complete rectangular metric space, there exists a point
such that
as
If . is continuous, we get
as
Since
for all
according to Lemma 3, we conclude that
are distinct. Therefore, there exists
such that 
Further, by (iii) it follows that

whenever
Taking the limit in the last inequality, it follows that
, which is again a contradiction.
In the case that (M, d) is .-regular, and since
for all
, from (1) we obtain the following:
(6)where

Passing limit
in (6) and using Proposition 1, the continuity of the functions
,
,and
as well as Remark 1, it follows that if
then

which is a contradiction. Hence,
is a fixed point of
.
Now, we show that the fixed point is unique if
whenever
. Indeed, in this case, by the contractive condition (1), for such possible distinct fixed points
we have
(7)Where

Hence, (7) becomes

which is again a contradiction. The proof of the Theorem 3 is complete.
Remark 2. In the proof of the main theorem [7, p. 586, line 1., Thm. 1, case 3], the authors used the fact that rectangular metric d (see also inequality (5) on the same page) is continuous, which is not given in the formulation of Theorem 1 in [7]. In the proof of the same theorem (p. 585), the authors also claimed that
which is not correct because we do not know whether
exists or not.
By taking
in Theorem 3, we obtain the following result as a corollary.
Corollary 4. Let .M, d. be a complete rectangular metric space, and let
be a triangular
-admissible mapping. Assume that there exist
such that, for
,

where

Also suppose that the following assertions hold:
(i)there exists
such that 
(ii) T is continuous or (M, d) is α-regular.
Then
has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
then the fixed point is unique.
Taking
in Corollary 4, the following useful corollary is obtained.
Corollary 5. Let (M, d) be a complete rectangular metric space, and let
be a triangular α-admissible mapping. Assume that there exists
such that, for 

where

Suppose also that the following assertions hold:
(i)there exists
such that
(ii)
is continuous or (M, d) is
-regular.
Then
has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
, then the fixed point is unique.
Consider
for
in Corollary 5, then we obtain the following result.
Corollary 6. Let (M, d) be a complete rectangular metric space, and let
be a triangular
-admissible mapping such that, for 

where

Also suppose that the following conditions are contended:
(i) there exists
such that 
(ii) T is continuous or (M, d) is α-regular.
Then
has a fixed point. Moreover, if for all
we have
then the fixed point is unique.
3 Application to a dynamical programming
This section aims to apply our results to solve the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the dynamic programming problem. In particular, the problem of dynamic program- ming related to multistage process reduces to solving the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the following functional equation:
(8)where
and
We suppose that
is a state space,
is a decision space,
and
are Banach spaces. Let
denote the set of all bounded real valued functions on
, and for an arbitrary
define
Clearly, the pair
is a Banach space. For details, see [18, 19].
In fact, the distance in
is given by

Define
by
(9)Obviously, T is well-defined if the functions f and G are bounded.
Theorem 4. Let T be an operator defined by (9), and suppose that the following conditions hold:
(i)
are continuous and bounded;
(ii)there exits
such that
and 
where

Then the functional equation (8) has a unique solution.
Proof. Let
be an arbitrary positive number,
and
then there exist
such that

which yields

In the same manner, we acquire

Since
is arbitrary, we conclude

This amounts to say that

where

Lastly, we specify
such that

Evidently
for all
This endorses that
is a triangular
-admissible mapping. Hence, due to Theorem 3,
has a unique fixed point
that is,
is a unique solution of the functional equation (8). This completes the proof.
4 Conclusion
This article is devoted to addressing some weaknesses of the main results introduced in [7]. Antithetical to the results in [7], we used only one function
instead of two
and
as used in [8, Defs. 2.3, 3.1]. We also dropped the property of Hausdorffness of the rectangular metric space (M, d) and the continuity of the mapping d. Using our new approach, we proved that a Picard sequence is Cauchy in the framework of rectangular metric spaces. Our obtained results complement and enrich several methods in the existing state-of-art. Thereafter, we apply our results to study a dynamic programming problem associated with a multistage process to affirm the applicability of the obtained results.
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