Contractive maps on normed linear spaces and their applications to nonlinear matrix equations

In this paper we will give necessary and sufficient conditions under which a map is a contraction on a certain subset of a normed linear space. These conditions are already well known for maps on intervals in R. Using the conditions and Banach’s fixed point theorem we can prove a fixed point theorem for operators on a normed linear space. The fixed point theorem will be applied to the matrix equation X = I_n + A^∗f(X)A, where f is a map on the set of positive definite matrices induced by a real valued map on (0, ∞). This will give conditions on A and f under which the equation has a unique solution in a certain set. We will consider two examples of f in detail. In one example the application of the fixed point theorem is the first step in proving that the equation has a unique positive definite solution under the conditions on A.