The density of extremal points in Ekeland’s variational principle

In this paper, we investigate the density of extremal points appeared in Ekeland’s variational principle. By introducing radial intersections of sets, we give a very general result on the density of extremal points in the framework of locally convex spaces. This solves a problem proposed by G. Isac in 1997. From the general result we deduce several convenient criterions for judging the density of extremal points, which extend and improve a result of F. Cammaroto and A. Chinni. Using the equivalence between Ekeland’s variational principle and Caristi’s fixed point theorem, we obtain some density results on Caristi’s fixed points. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.