Solving the Banach fixed point principle for nonlinear contractions in probabilistic metric spaces Original Research Article

The probabilistic version of the classical Banach Contraction Principle was proved in 1972 by Sehgal and Bharucha-Reid [V.M. Sehgal, A.T. Bharucha-Reid, Fixed points of contraction mappings on PM spaces. Math. Syst. Theory 6, 97–102]. Their fixed point theorem is further generalized by many authors. In the intervening years many others have proved the probabilistic versions of the other known metric fixed point theorems. However, the problem to prove the probabilistic versions of the very important generalization of the Banach Contraction Principle, obtained in 1969 by Boyd and Wong [D.W. Boyd, J.S.W. Wong, On nonlinear contractions, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 20 (1969) 458–464], who proved the fixed point theorem for a self-mapping of a metric space, satisfying the very general nonlinear contractive condition, is unsolved in these days. Similarly, as in the metric space case, to prove a fixed point theorem for a mapping, satisfying the general probabilistic nonlinear contractive condition, it was necessary to find a new approach, substantially different from the previous technique for cases where a mapping satisfies the probabilistic linear contraction condition, introduced by Sehgal and Bharucha-Reid and further used by many authors. So, the problem to obtain a truthful probabilistic version of the Banach fixed point principle for general nonlinear contractions existed unsolved for over 35 years. We have solved this problem in this paper.