Fixed point theorems for set-valued contractions in complete metric spaces

The fixed point theory of set-valued contractions which was initiated by Nadler [S.B. Nadler Jr., Multi-valued contraction mappings, Pacific J. Math. 30 (1969) 475-488] was developed in different directions by many authors, in particular, by [S. Reich, Fixed points of contractive functions, Boll. Unione Mat. Ital. 5 (1972) 26-42; N. Mizoguchi, W. Takahashi, Fixed point theorems for multivalued mappings on complete metric spaces, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 141 (1989) 177-188; Y. Feng, S. Liu, Fixed point theorems for multi-valued contractive mappings and multi-valued Caristi type mappings, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 317 (2006) 103-112]. In the present paper, the concept of contraction for set-valued maps in metric spaces is introduced and the conditions guaranteeing the existence of a fixed point for such a contraction are established. One of our results essentially generalizes the Nadler and Feng-Liu theorems and is different from the Mizoguchi-Takahashi result. The second result is different from the Reich and Mizoguchi-Takahashi results. The method used in the proofs of our results is inspired by Mizoguchi-Takahashi and Feng-Liu's ideas. Comparisons and examples are given. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.