Rational (a, p)−Quasicontractions and Fractional Delayed Nonlocal Caputo Problems via Hammerstein Operators

We introduce and study a new class of nonlinear operators on metric spaces, called rational (a, p)−quasicontractions. Within this framework, we establish Greguš-type fixed-point theorems for closed, convex subsets of Banach spaces. The results establish the existence and uniqueness of fixed points, as well as the convergence of the Picard iteration for every initial guess. We show that rational (a, p)−quasicontractions strictly extend several classical contractive classes, including Hardy-Rogers, Kannan, Chatterjea, and rational contractions, and we provide explicit examples exhibiting the properness of these inclusions. As an application, we consider a nonlocal boundary value problem for a Caputo fractional differential equation of order α∈(1, 2) with distributed delay and mixed nonlocal boundary conditions. By rewriting the problem as a Hammerstein-Volterra integral equation on a cone, and imposing natural growth and rational Lipschitz conditions on the delayed nonlinearity, we show that the associated Hammerstein operator is a rational (a, p)−quasicontraction. This yields the existence, uniqueness, and global attractivity of a positive solution. Two model fractional nonlinearities with delayed feedback are discussed in detail, along with a numerical scheme that illustrates the predicted geometric convergence of the discrete Picard iteration in the Caputo fractional setting.