NONLINEAR SEMIGROUPS, FIXED POINTS, AND GEOMETRY OF DOMAINS IN BANACH SPACES

Nonlinear semigroup theory is not only of intrinsic interest, but is also important in the study of evolution problems. In the last forty years, the generation theory of flows of holomorphic mappings has been of great interest in the theory of Markov stochastic branching processes, the theory of composition operators, control theory, and optimization. It transpires that the asymptotic behavior of solutions to evolution equations is applicable to the study of the geometry of certain domains in complex spaces. Readers are provided with a systematic overview of many results concerning both nonlinear semigroups in metric and Banach spaces and the fixed point theory of mappings, which are nonexpansive with respect to hyperbolic metrics (in particular, holomorphic self-mappings of domains in Banach spaces). The exposition is organized in a readable and intuitive manner, presenting basic functional and complex analysis as well as very recent developments.