1. Introduction and Preliminaries
Although it is not as old as some classical subjects, fixed-point theory has become an important branch of mathematics. One hundred years ago, in 1922, Banach [
1] gave their famous Banach Contraction Principle (BCP). Innumerable extensions of this result have been given over the years. One such extension was established by Nadler [
2] for a multi-valued contraction mapping, in which the Hausdorff function
, endowed with the metric function
d, plays an important part. Fixed-point theory provides a technique to assure the existence of solutions of many differential and integral equations. Many recent research works can be seen from this perspective. Zhane et al. [
3] obtained the non-negative stable approximate solutions to ill-posed linear operator equations in a Hilbert space setting which are based on fixed-point iterations in combination with preconditioning ideas. In [
4], Shcheglov et al. used the method of successive approximations to develop a novel iterative algorithm to estimate sorption isotherms.
Matthews [
5] defined the partial metric space (pMS) as a generalization of the metric space. Such spaces are important structures in computer science and logic programming semantics. Matthews proved a fixed-point theorem for contractions in partial metric spaces which are analogous to the BCP. A lot of literature has investigated partial metric spaces. See, for example, [
6,
7,
8,
9]. The
b-metric space (bMS) was first propounded in the works of Bourbaki [
10] and Bakhtin [
11]. Czerwik [
12] gave a formal definition for
b-metric spaces, giving a weaker triangular inequality. Furthermore, we refer the reader to see [
13,
14]. He also generalized the Banach contraction principle.
Fuzzy set theory was initiated by Zadeh [
15] in 1965. Weiss [
16] and Butnariu [
17] introduced fuzzy mappings as a subclass of multi-valued mappings and demonstrated certain fixed-point theorems. The result proved by Heilpern [
18] in 1981 on fuzzy mappings is also a noticeable milestone. This theorem is a generalization of the theorem for multi-valued mappings. With many applications in the modern world, it is easily warranted that fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory are subjects of immense importance and applications. In 2022, Batul et al. [
19] introduced the notion of
fuzzy contractive mappings and established few results for the existence of
fuzzy fixed points of an
contraction and a pair of
contractions. One can find some very good results on fuzzy mappings in [
19,
20]. Shukla [
21] combined the concepts of pMSs and bMSs, giving the notion of partial
b-metric spaces as a generalization of both. He then went on to establish an analogous result to the Banach and Kannan-type fixed-point theorems. This new platform opened doors for many researchers to establish the existence of fixed points for different mappings.
Shoaib et al. [
22] provided results for the existence of fixed points of fuzzy mappings in a dislocated bMS, confining the space to a closed ball. In this paper, we extend their results and consider fuzzy mappings defined on a partial
b-metric space (pbMS) and we provide two fixed-point theorems. The first is a result proving the existence of a fixed point for a single fuzzy mapping and the second is a result in which we provide a common fixed point for two fuzzy mappings defined on the same space. Theorem 2.1 of [
22] becomes the special case of our result. As an application of our results, we established two results to prove the existence of fixed points of multi-valued mappings. These theorems are also the special cases of results established in this research.
The following are some definitions and results which are useful for the proof of our main theorems.
Definition 1 ([
21])
. Consider a non-empty set A mapping is called a b-metric on Ξ if there is a constant such that for any , the following axioms are satisfied: B2: ;
B3:
B4:
Definition 2 ([
23])
. A dislocated (metric-like) function on a non-empty set Ξ
is a function such that for all : DL1: if then ;
DL2:
DL3:
and the pair is called a dislocated (metric-like) space.
Definition 3 ([
7])
. A mapping where Ξ
is a non-empty set, is said to be a partial metric on Ξ
if for any : P1:
P2: ;
P3:
;
P4:
.
The pair is then called a partial metric space.
Definition 4 ([
21])
. Consider a non-empty set Ξ
and a mapping . We call a partial b-metric on Ξ
if for a constant and for all , the following axioms are satisfied: (Ƥ1):
iff
(Ƥ2): ;
(Ƥ3):
(Ƥ4):
Example 1. Define a function by . It can be easily verified that is a pbMS with .
Definition 5 ([
8])
. Consider a pbMS . Let be an element in Ξ
and let be a real number. Open and closed balls with centre and radius ρ are defined below: (a) Open Ball:
(b) Closed Ball:
Definition 6. Consider a pbMS and a non-empty subset Φ of Ξ. Suppose each has a minimum one best approximation in Φ. Such a set Φ is said to be a proximinal set and is the family of all proximinal sets of Ξ.
Definition 7. Consider a pbMS and . The partial Hausdorff b-metric on is defined by Definition 8 ([
22])
. Let Ξ
be a nonempty set. A function whose domain is Ξ
and has values in is called a fuzzy set in Ξ.
We denote the family of all fuzzy sets in Ξ
by .For a fuzzy set in Ξ, the function gives the degree (or grade) of membership of ϰ in . For a number , denotes the α-level set of a fuzzy set which is defined as and
Let Ξ be a non-empty set and A mapping from Ξ to is called a fuzzy mapping. A fuzzy set is a subset of having a membership function which represents the degree of membership of ψ in The α-level set of is denoted by
Example 2. Let be a set of students in a class. Let be the intelligence level of each student. The fuzzy set will look something like We say the degree of membership of in is 0.75.
Definition 9 ([
22])
. Consider a fuzzy mapping and an element . If there exist such that then is a fuzzy fixed point of The following results are useful in obtaining our main results. The proposition below is modified from [
24].
Proposition 1. If is a pbMS, then the following conditions are equivalent:
(i) For all
(iii) For all and all , we have
Proof. We will show that
For any
. This means
such that
. From
, we have
i.e.,
and so
. □
The lemmas for partial
b-metric spaces are taken from [
25].
Lemma 1. For a pbMS , if Φ
is a non-empty subset of Ξ,
then for Corollary 1. For a pbMS , if Φ is a non-empty subset of Ξ and for some we have then
Lemma 2. For a pbMS and subsets , we have for any , Lemma 3. Consider a pbMS . Let and be a constant. For any there exist such that Corollary 2. Consider a pbMS and let and be a constant. From the definition of , we must have for all 2. Main Results
In this section, we will discuss our main results. For our first result, we will consider a single fuzzy mapping defined on a pbMS.
Definition 10. Let be a pbMS and be a fuzzy mapping. Then is said to be a multi-valued fuzzy generalized contraction (-contraction) if for all and with
Theorem 1. Consider a complete pbMS with and a fuzzy mapping . Let be a constant. Further, let be an arbitrary point of Suppose there exists an for all such that can be classified as a multi-valued -contraction and for all and where
with and . Further, ,
then there is such that
Proof. Let
be an arbitrary point of
such that
Form a sequence
in
such that
We must first show that
Using (
1), we have
Now, let
Using Lemmas 2 and 3 we have
Thus,
Hence,
That is,
Now, consider
By a mathematical induction, we have
hence we obtain
The next step is to show that
is a Cauchy sequence. For this, choose two integers
m and
n with
and consider
This means is a Cauchy sequence and so we have , which converges to
The final step is to show that
is the desired fixed point. For this, we use Lemma 2 and Corollary 2 and consider
Taking the limit as
, we obtain
Hence, is a fixed point of □
Lemma 4. Every partial metric space is a dislocated metric space, but the converse is not true. The following counterexample is given to illustrate this fact.
Example 3. Consider the space with a dislocated metric on Ξ
defined by We see that cannot be a partial metric space, since the property of least self-distance is not satisfied: Remark 1. Theorem 2.1 of [22] is a special case of Theorem 1 by Lemma 4. Definition 11. Consider a pbMS and assume that , be two fuzzy mappings defined on Ξ.
The pair satisfies a -contraction condition if for all with and Definition 12. Let be a metric space and let be two fuzzy mappings of A point satisfying and for some is called a common fuzzy fixed point of S and T.
The next theorem guarantees a common fixed point for two fuzzy mappings and of a complete pbMS.
Theorem 2. Consider a complete pbMS with . Let and be two fuzzy mappings defined on Ξ.
Let be a constant. Further, let be an arbitrary point of Suppose there exist such that the pair satisfies a -contraction condition and for all and , where with Further, ,
then there exists an element , that is, a fixed point for both and
Proof. Consider an arbitrary in such that . A sequence is constructed in such that for
We will first show that
. Using (
3), we have
Now, suppose .
Case 1. Let
. By Lemma 2, we have
Now, consider
:
Adding (
4) and (
5) and discarding the negative terms of the numerator and the positive terms of the denominator, we obtain
Case 2. Applying the same method for
, we obtain
Applying (
6) and (
7) repeatedly gives
and
Combining the above two inequalities gives the general inequality
By a mathematical induction, we have
and (
8) can be rewritten as
To show that
is a Cauchy sequence, we take two integers
m and
n with
and consider
Hence, is a Cauchy sequence, converging to
Finally, it is only left to show that
is the common fixed point of
and
. For this, we will once again use Lemma 2 and Corollary 2 and consider
Taking the limit as
, we obtain
Hence, is the desired fixed point of . To show that is also a fixed point of , we can adopt a similar method to that shown above. □
- 1.
Theorem 2.2 of [22] is a special case of the above result. - 2.
In the case that the space becomes a partial metric space. We see the result is valid for such spaces and hence also holds in dislocated metric spaces.
4. Applications
The results given in
Section 2 can be modified for multi-valued mappings defined on pbMS that are complete. Two theorems are given below for the fixed points of multi-valued mappings in a complete PMS. The first is about a generalized multi-valued contraction mapping.
Theorem 3. Consider a complete pbMS with and let be an arbitrary point in Let be a constant. Let be a multi-valued generalized contraction [26] for all Furthermore, let with and . Further, ,
then there is such that , i.e., is a fixed point of
Proof. We define an arbitrary mapping
and a fuzzy mapping
by
By definition, the
level set of
is
We have satisfied all the conditions of Theorem 1 and so there must be a point
such that
□
The next result is about two multi-valued mappings in a complete partial b-metric space.
Theorem 4. Consider a pbMS with . Let be complete and be a constant. Let be an arbitrary point in Ξ and be non-self multi-valued mappings satisfying the generalized contraction condition for a pair of multi-valued mappings for all Furthermore, let
with Further, ,
then there exists , which is the desired common fixed point of and
Proof. We define an arbitrary mapping
and two fuzzy mappings
by
and
By definition, the
level sets of
and
is
and
Hence, all conditions of Theorem 2 are met and so there must be a point
such that
□