Arbitrary Binary Relations, Contraction Mappings, and b-Metric Spaces.

We prove some results on the existence and uniqueness of fixed points defined on a b-metric space endowed with an arbitrary binary relation. As applications, we obtain some statements on the coincidence of points involving a pair of mappings. Our results generalize, extend, modify and unify several well-known results and, especially, the results obtained by Alam and Imdad [J. Fixed Point Theory Appl., 17, 693–702 (2015); Fixed Point Theory, 18, 415–432 (2017), and Filomat, 31, 4421–4439 (2017)] and Berzig [J. Fixed Point Theory Appl., 12, 221–238 (2012)]. In addition, we provide an example to illustrate the suitability of the obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]