The theory of modular spaces was initiated by Nakano [34] in 1950 in connection with the theory of order spaces and redefined and generalized by Musielak and Orlicz [35] in 1959. Even though a metric is not defined, many problems in metric fixed point theory can be reformulated and solved in modular spaces (see, for instance, [36–39]). In particular, Dhompongsa et al. [40] have obtained some fixed point results for multivalued mappings in modular functions spaces.
Let us recall some basic concepts about modular function spaces (for more details the reader is referred to [41, 42]).
Let
be a nonempty set and
a nontrivial
-algebra of subsets of
. Let
be a
-ring of subsets of
, such that
for any
and
. Let us assume that there exists an increasing sequence of sets
such that
(for instance,
can be the class of sets of finite measure in a
-finite measure space). By
we denote the linear space of all simple functions with supports from
. By
we will denote the space of all measurable functions, that is, all functions
such that there exist a sequence
,
and
for all
.
Let us recall that a set function
is called a
-subadditive measure if
,
for any
and
for any sequence of sets
. By
we denote the characteristic function of the set
.
Definition 4.1.
A functional
is called a function modular if:
(1)
for any
;
(2)
whenever
for any
,
and 
(3)
is a
-subadditive measure for every 
(4)
as
decreases to
for every
, where 
(5)if there exists
such that
, then
for every 
(6)for any
,
is order continuous on
, that is,
if
and decreases to
.
A
-subadditive measure
is said to be additive if
whenever
such that
and
.
The definition of
is then extended to
by
Definition 4.2.
A set
is said to be
-null if
for every
. A property
is said to hold
-almost everywhere (
-a.e.) if the set
is
-null. For example, we will say frequently 
-a.e.
Note that a countable union of
-null sets is still
-null. In the sequel we will identify sets
and
whose symmetric difference
is
-null, similarly we will identify measurable functions which differ only on a
-null set.
Under the above conditions, we define the function
by
. We know from [41] that
satisfies the following properties:
(i)
if and only if 
-a.e.
(ii)
for every scalar
with
and
.
(iii)
if
,
and
.
In addition, if the following property is satisfied
(iii)
if
,
and
,
we say that
is a convex modular.
A function modular
is called
-finite if there exists an increasing sequence of sets
such that
and
.
The modular
defines a corresponding modular space
, which is given by
In general the modular
is not subadditive and therefore does not behave as a norm or a distance. But one can associate to a modular an
-norm. In fact, when
is convex, the formula
defines a norm which is frequently called the Luxemburg norm. The formula
defines a different norm which is called the Amemiya norm. Moreover,
and
are equivalent norms. We can also consider the space
Definition 4.3.
A function modular
is said to satisfy the
-condition if
It is known that the
-condition is equivalent to
.
Definition 4.4.
A function modular
is said to satisfy the
-type condition if there exists
such that for any
we have
.
In general, the
-type condition and
-condition are not equivalent, even though it is obvious that the
-type condition implies the
-condition.
Definition 4.5.
Let
be a modular space.
(1)The sequence
is said to be
-convergent to
if
as
.
(2)The sequence
is said to be
-a.e. convergent to
if the set
is
-null.
(3)A subset
of
is called
-a.e. closed if the
-a.e. limit of a
-a.e. convergent sequence of
always belongs to
.
(4)A subset
of
is called
-a.e. compact if every sequence in
has a
-a.e. convergent subsequence in
.
(5)A subset
of
is called
-bounded if
We know by [41] that under the
-condition the norm convergence and modular convergence are equivalent, which implies that the norm and modular convergence are also the same when we deal with the
-type condition. In the sequel we will assume that the modular function
is convex and satisfies the
-type condition. Hence, the
-convergence defines a topology which is identical to the norm topology.
In the same way as the Hausdorff distance defined on the family of bounded closed subsets of a metric space, we can define the analogue to the Hausdorff distance for modular function spaces. We will speak of
-Hausdorff distance even though it is not a metric.
Definition 4.6.
Let
be a nonempty subset of
. We will denote by
the family of nonempty
-closed subsets of
and by
the family of nonempty
-compact subsets of
. Let
be the
-Hausdorff distance on
, that is,
where
is the
-distance between
and
. A multivalued mapping
is said to be a
-contraction if there exists a constant
such that
If it is valid when
, then
is called
-nonexpansive.
A function
is called a fixed point for a multivalued mapping
if
.
Dhompongsa et al. [40] stated the Banach Contraction Principle for multivalued mappings in modular function spaces.
Theorem 4.7 (see [40, Theorem
]).
Let
be a convex function modular satisfying the
-type condition,
a nonempty
-bounded
-closed subset of
, and
a
-contraction mapping, that is, there exists a constant
such that
Then
has a fixed point.
By using that result, they proved the existence of fixed points for multivalued
-nonexpansive mappings.
Theorem 4.8 (see [40, Theorem
]).
Let
be a convex function modular satisfying the
-type condition,
a nonempty
-a.e. compact
-bounded convex subset of
, and
a
-nonexpansive mapping. Then
has a fixed point.
They also applied the above theorem to obtain fixed point results in the Banach space
(resp.,
) for multivalued mappings whose domains are compact in the topology of the convergence locally in measure (resp.,
-topology).
Consider the space
for a
-finite measure
with the usual norm. Let
be a bounded closed convex subset of
for
and
a multivalued nonexpansive mapping. Because of uniform convexity of
, it is known that
has a fixed point. For
,
can fail to have a fixed point even in the singlevalued case for a weakly compact convex set
(see [43]). However, since
is a modular space where
for all
, Theorem 4.8 implies the existence of a fixed point when we define mappings on a
-a.e. compact
-bounded convex subset of
. Thus the following can be stated.
Corollary 4.9 (see [40, Corollary
]).
Let
be as above,
a nonempty bounded convex set which is compact for the topology of the convergence locally in measure, and
a nonexpansive mapping. Then
has a fixed point.
In the case of the space
we also can obtain a bounded closed convex set
and a nonexpansive mapping
which is fixed point free. Indeed, consider the following easy and well-known example.
Let
Define a nonexpansive mapping
by
then
is a fixed point free map. However, if we consider
where
, for all
, then
-a.e. convergence and
-convergence are identical on bounded subsets of
(see [36]). This fact leads to the following corollary.
Corollary 4.10 (see [40, Corollary
]).
Let
be a nonempty
-compact convex subset of
and
a nonexpansive mapping. Then
has a fixed point.
Next we will give a property of closed convex bounded subsets of
more general than weak star compactness which implies the fixed point property for nonexpansive mappings.
Domínguez et al. introduced in [44] some compactness conditions concerning proximinal subsets called Property (P). Following this idea we will use the following similar notion for modular function spaces.
Definition 4.11.
Let
be a nonempty
-closed convex
-bounded subset of
. It is said that
has Property (
) if for every
which is the
-a.e. limit of a sequence in
, the set
is a nonempty and
-compact subset of
, where 
Using that notion and the following two lemmas, we obtain a new fixed point result for multivalued
-nonexpansive mappings.
Lemma 4.12 (see [40, Lemma
]).
Let
be a convex function modular satisfying the
-type condition,
, and
a nonempty
-compact subset of
. Then there exists
such that
Lemma 4.13 (see [37, Lemma
]).
Let
be a function modular satisfying the
-type condition, and
be a sequence in
such that
and there exists
such that
. Then,
Theorem 4.14.
Let
be a convex function modular satisfying the
-type condition,
a nonempty
-closed
-bounded convex subset of
satisfying Property
such that every sequence in
has a
-a.e. convergent subsequence in
, and
a
-nonexpansive mapping. Then
has a fixed point.
Proof.
Fix
. For each
, the
-contraction
is defined by
By Theorem 4.7, we can conclude that
has a fixed point, say
. It is easy to see that
By our assumptions, we can assume, by passing through a subsequence, that
for some
. By Lemma 4.12, for each
there exists
such that
Now we are going to show that
for each
. Taking any
, from the
-compactness of
and Lemma 4.12, we can find
such that
and we can assume, by passing through a subsequence, that
for some
. From above and using Lemma 4.13, it follows that
On the other hand, by Lemma 4.13 we also have
Thus, we deduce
, which implies that
and so
.
Now we define the mapping
by
. From [45, Proposition
] we know that the mapping
is upper semicontinuous. Since
is a nonempty
-compact convex set and the
-topology is a norm-topology, we can apply the Kakutani-Bohnenblust-Karlin Theorem (see [14]) to obtain a fixed point for
and hence for
.
If we apply the previous theorem in the particular case of the space
for a
-finite measure
with the usual norm, we obtain the following result, which can be also deduced from [44, Theorem
].
Corollary 4.15.
Let
be as above,
a nonempty closed bounded convex set which satisfies Property (P). Suppose, in addition, that every sequence in
has a convergent locally in measure subsequence in
. If
is a nonexpansive mapping, then
has a fixed point.
If we consider now the space
, then the assumption of existence of a
-convergent subsequence for every sequence in
can be removed and we can state the following result.
Corollary 4.16.
Let
be a nonempty closed bounded convex subset of
which satisfies Property (P). If
is a nonexpansive mapping, then
has a fixed point.
Notice that in
there exists a subset with Property (P) which is not
-compact.
Example 4.17 (see [44, Example
]).
Let
be a bounded sequence of nonnegative real numbers and let
be the standard Schauder basis of
. It is clear that the set
, where
, is never weakly star compact. Nevertheless, by using [46, Example
] it is easy to show that
has Property (P) if and only if
is nonempty and finite.