# Contraction mapping

In mathematics, a contraction mapping, or contraction, on a metric space (M,d) is a function f from M to itself, with the property that there is some real number k < 1 such that, for all x and y in M,

[itex]d(f(x),f(y))\leq k\,d(x,y).[itex]

The smallest such value of k is called the Lipschitz constant of f. Contractive maps are sometimes called Lipschitzian maps. If the Lipschitz constant is equal to one, then the mapping is said to be non-expansive.

More generally, the idea of a contractive mapping can be defined for maps between metric spaces. Thus, if (M,d) and (N,g) are two metric spaces, and [itex]f:M\rightarrow N[itex], then one looks for the constant k such that [itex]g(f(x),f(y))\leq k\,d(x,y)[itex] for all x and y in M.

Every contraction mapping is Lipschitz continuous and hence uniformly continuous.

A contraction mapping has at most one fixed point. Moreover, the Banach fixed point theorem states that every contraction mapping on a nonempty complete metric space has a unique fixed point, and that for any x in M the iterated function sequence x, f (x), f (f (x)), f (f (f (x))), ... converges to the fixed point.

## References

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