1. Introduction
Multivalued functions are a particular type of relations rather than a generalization of single-valued functions. These functions assign more than one value to each input and often exist while reversing many-to-one functions. These functions rise with several results as extensions of single-valued functions over continuity, contraction mappings, fixed-point theorems, optimization, differentiation, integration, and topological degree theory. The following theorem is the first significant extension that has been done over Brouwer’s work on fixed points.
Theorem 1 (Kakutani, 1941 [
1])
. If is an upper semi-continuous point-to-set mapping of an r-dimensional closed simplex S into , then there exists an such that . In 1953, Strother [
2] worked on an open question concerning fixed points; he asserted that a space with a fixed-point property for single-valued functions need not have the fixed-point property for multivalued functions, and this assertion has added credit to the multivalued functions. In the year 1969, Nadler extended the Banach Contraction Principle via multivalued contraction mappings.
Theorem 2 (Nadler, 1969 [
3])
. Let be a complete metric space and be the family of nonempty closed and bounded subsets of X. If is a multivalued contraction mapping, then F has a fixed point. Since the establishment of such initiations over multivalued functions, many more fixed-point theorems for multivalued mappings have been demonstrated in various spaces. Beg et al. [
4], Chaipunya et al. [
5], Khan et al. [
6], Mutlu et al. [
7], Mustafa et al. [
8], Mehmood et al. [
9] and Arshad and Shoaib [
10] are a few authors whose works have demonstrated, respectively, these developments in convex metric spaces, modular metric spaces, partial metric spaces, bipolar metric spaces, G-metric spaces, cone metric spaces and fuzzy metric spaces. In the interim, Rodriguez-Lopez and Romaguera [
11] introduced the Hausdorff fuzzy metric for compact sets. By combining the ideas of fuzzy metrics and Hausdorff topology, Shoaib et al. [
12] produced a fixed-point result for a family of multivalued mappings that are contractive on a sequence enclosed in a closed ball rather than the entire space.
Since the class of intuitionistic fuzzy metric spaces is more diverse than the class of fuzzy metric spaces, such a study is then applied to Hausdorff intuitionistic fuzzy metric spaces [
13]. In light of these developments, this work aims to obtain a common fixed-point result for a family of multivalued mappings constructed over Hausdorff neutrosophic metric spaces. Additionally, an example is provided to demonstrate the applicability of the main result.
2. Preliminaries
Definition 1 ([
14])
. Let . A binary operation ⋄ defined from to Y is called:- (i)
a continuous t-norm (shortly, ctn) if
- (n1)
⋄ is associative, commutative and continuous;
- (n2)
, for all ;
- (n3)
whenever and for each .
- (ii)
a continuous t-conorm [shortly, ctcn] if
- (cn1)
⋄ is associative, commutative, continuous;
- (cn2)
for all ;
- (cn3)
whenever and for each .
The neutrosophic set [
15] is the basis for the space that served as the starting point for the suggested task. Three different types of values are given to each element in this set, measuring the degrees of membership, nonmembership, and indeterminacy. It is richer than the classical set, fuzzy set, and intuitionistic fuzzy set due to this characteristic. There are publications that define metrics over the neutrosophic sets, with [
16,
17,
18,
19] a few worth mentioning. The one selected for this study is found at [
18].
Definition 2 ([
18])
. A 6-tuple is said to be an Neutrosophic Metric Space (shortly, NMS) if U is an arbitrary nonempty set, ⋄ is a ctn, ⟐ is a ctcn, and , and are neutrosophic sets on satisfying the following conditions for all :- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
if and only if
- 4.
- 5.
for all
- 6.
is neutrosophic continuous;
- 7.
for all
- 8.
if and only if
- 9.
- 10.
for all
- 11.
is neutrosophic continuous;
- 12.
for all
- 13.
if and only if
- 14.
- 15.
for all
- 16.
is neutrosophic continuous;
- 17.
for all
Then, is called a Neutrosophic Metric on U. The functions , , and denote, respectively, the degrees of closedness, neturalness, and non-closedness, between , and δ with respect to λ.
The last condition of the aforementioned definition is omitted here since the domain of is .
Example 1 ([
18])
. Let be a metric space. Define and ω ⟐ for all , and let be defined byfor all and Then, is an NMS. Remark 1 ([
18])
. In an NMS is nondecreasing, is nonincreasing, and is decreasing for all Definition 3. Let be an NMS.
- (a)
A sequence converges to a point if for all and In this case, ζ is called the limit of the sequence , and we write or
- (b)
A sequence in is said to be a Cauchy sequence if and for all and
- (c)
The space U is said to be complete if and only if every Cauchy sequence in U is convergent. It is called compact if every sequence has a convergent subsequence.
Definition 4. Let be an NMS. Let . An open ball with center and radius ϵ is defined as Definition 5. Let B be a nonempty subset of an NMS . For and , we define that Definition 6. Let be an NMS. Let be the collection of all nonempty compact subsets of U. Let and . Define , , and : by: The 5-tuple is called a Hausdorff NMS (shortly, HNMS).
Proposition 1. Let be an NMS. Then and are continuous functions on .
Proof. Consider a sequence in . For the sake of simplicity, let us denote it by . Suppose the sequence converges to , where , and .
Then, the sequences , and lie in . As is compact, each of these sequences has converging subsequences, say, , , and , to some points in .
Choose
such that
. Then there is an
such that
for all
. Hence,
for all
. We also have that
for all
.
Letting
in the above inequalities, we obtain that
Since the functions
and
, we can deduce that
Therefore, and are continuous on . □
3. The Main Result
Results that were essential to proving the main result are initially presented in this section.
Lemma 1. Let be an NMS. Then for , and , there is a such that Proof. By the continuity of the functions
,
,
and by the compactness of
B, we can find a
such that
Then, it is easy to conclude that
□
Lemma 2. Let be an NMS. Let be an HNMS. Then for all , for each and for all there exists such that Proof. First,
Using Lemma 1, one writes
□
To start with the main results, let us take some notes:
is an NMS, is an index set, and .
Let be a family of multivalued mappings from U to
For some
, we can then find
such that for all
,
Choose
such that
Continuing the process, we get a sequence
in
U such that
, and for all
,
For the sake of clarity, let us denote the sequence by .
We make the below-mentioned assumptions, which stand for the results proposed here:
- (i)
is a complete NMS;
- (ii)
The ctn ⋄ and the ctcn ⟐ are defined, respectively, by
- (iii)
is an HNMS;
- (iv)
is a family of multivalued mappings from U to .
Theorem 3. Let be a sequence generated by as above. Suppose that with , , and with .
If, for all ,and, for some ,then - (1)
is a sequence in ;
- (2)
converges to some δ in ;
- (3)
If (1) and (2) hold for δ, then the family of multivalued mappings in has a common fixed point.
Proof. If , then is a common fixed point of for all .
Let
. Then, by Lemma 2, we have
Then, it follows from induction that
Let us first show that .
This shows that .
Let
. From (
1), we have
Hence, we have that .
Now, for all
and
, the inequalities (
4), (
5), and (
6) can be written as
For each
we have
As for all , we have as .
Hence,
as
.
As for all , we have as .
Hence,
as
. Further,
As for all , we have as
Hence, as
That is, is a Cauchy sequence in
As every closed ball in a complete NMS is complete, is complete. Therefore there exists a point in such that .
We can now choose some
such that
Letting
we have
Letting
we have
.
Letting we have
These deductions imply that .
Hence, .
This completes the proof. □
Let us bring here another notation for a sequence as before:
Let
be a multivalued mapping from
U to
. Then, for all
, there exists
such that
Let
such that
Thus, we can construct a sequence
of points in
U such that
, and
for all
. We denote this sequence by
.
Corollary 1. Let be a sequence generated by , as above. Assume that , , with .
If, for all ,and if for some ,then - (i)
is a sequence in ;
- (ii)
converges to δ for some ;
- (iii)
If (8) and (9) hold for δ, then has a fixed point in .
Corollary 2. Let be a sequence generated by , as in the previous corollary. Assume that for some , , with . If for all , and if for some ,then has a fixed point in Example 2. Let and d be a Euclidean metric on U. Define that and for all . , , and are defined byfor all and . Then, is an NMS. Consider the multivalued mapping , defined bywhere . Consider and ; then, Now, Thus, we obtain a sequence , which is generated by . For and , we have We also have that
For all we have Hence, the contractive conditions hold over .
Hence, all the conditions of Theorem 3 are satisfied. Therefore, is a sequence in and . Moreover, has a common fixed point 0.