[Math] Can’t there be more than one fixed points in a contraction? or none

fixed-point-theorems

I was going through the contraction mapping theorem in my book where it says, that if $\phi: G\to G$ is a contraction, then $\phi$ has a unique fixed point $\alpha$ on $G$.

Sequence {$x_n$}, $x_{n+1} = \phi(x_n) $ for $n=0,1,2…$ converges to $\alpha$ with
$$|x_n – \alpha |\leq\frac{\lambda^n }{1- \lambda} |x_1 – x_0| $$ for n=1,2,3,4….

Can a contraction have only a unique fixed point? Cannot there be multiple fixed points? Like this?

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Or cannot it have any fixed points at all?

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Best Answer

Yes, a contraction has a unique fixed point. Proof: Let $d(\cdot,\cdot)$ be our distance function (which is absolute value on the real numbers, but works in more general settings).

Assume $\phi$ is a contraction and $a,b$ are both fixed points. Let $0<k<1$ be our contraction constant. Then $d(g(a),g(b))<k\cdot d(a,b)$, since it's a contraction, but $g(a)=a,g(b)=b$, so $d(g(a),g(b))=d(a,b)$, hence $d(a,b)<k\cdot d(a,b)$, which is only possible if $d(a,b)=0$, hence $a=b$.

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