Equilibria of set-valued maps on nonconvex domains

Abstract:

We present new theorems on the existence of equilibria (or zeros) of convex as well as nonconvex set-valued maps defined on compact neighborhood retracts of normed spaces. The maps are subject to tangency conditions expressed in terms of new concepts of normal and tangent cones to such sets. Among other things, we show that if $K$ is a compact neighborhood retract with nontrivial Euler characteristic in a Banach space $E$ , and $\Phi :K\longrightarrow 2^E$ is an upper hemicontinuous set-valued map with nonempty closed convex values satisfying the tangency condition \begin{equation*} \Phi (x)\cap T_K^r(x)\neq \emptyset \text { for all }x\in K, \end{equation*} then there exists $x_0\in K$ such that $0\in \Phi (x_0).$ Here, $T_K^r(x)$ denotes a new concept of retraction tangent cone to $K$ at $x$ suited for compact neighborhood retracts. When $K$ is locally convex at $x,T_K^r(x)$ coincides with the usual tangent cone of convex analysis. Special attention is given to neighborhood retracts having “lipschitzian behavior”, called $L-$retracts below. This class of sets is very broad; it contains compact homeomorphically convex subsets of Banach spaces, epi-Lipschitz subsets of Banach spaces, as well as proximate retracts. Our results thus generalize classical theorems for convex domains, as well as recent results for nonconvex sets.