Detecting fixed points of nonexpansive maps by illuminating the unit ball

Abstract

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a nonexpansive map on a finite dimensional normed space to have a nonempty, bounded set of fixed points. Among other results we show that if $f : V \rightarrow V$ is a nonexpansive map on a finite dimensional normed space $V$, then the fixed point set of $f$ is nonempty and bounded if and only if there exist $w_1, \ldots , w_m$ in $V$ such that $\{f(w_i) - w_i : i = 1, \ldots, m \}$ illuminates the unit ball. This yields a numerical procedure for detecting fixed points of nonexpansive maps on finite dimensional spaces. We also discuss applications of this procedure to certain nonlinear eigenvalue problems arising in game theory and mathematical biology.