In this book the authors use a technique based on recurrence relations to study the convergence of the Newton method under mild differentiability conditions on the first derivative of the operator involved. The authors' technique relies on the construction of a scalar sequence, not majorizing, that satisfies a system of recurrence relations, and guarantees the convergence of the method. The application is user-friendly and has certain advantages over Kantorovich's majorant principle. First, it allows generalizations to be made of the results obtained under conditions of Newton-Kantorovich type and, second, it improves the results obtained through majorizing sequences. In addition, the authors extend the application of Newton's method in Banach spaces from the modification of the domain of starting points. As a result, the scope of Kantorovich's theory for Newton's method is substantially broadened. Moreover, this technique can be applied to any iterative method. This book is chiefly intended for researchers and (postgraduate) students working on nonlinear equations, as well as scientists in general with an interest in numerical analysis.

This book shows the importance of studying semilocal convergence in iterative methods through Newton's method and addresses the most important aspects of the Kantorovich's theory including implicated studies. Kantorovich's theory for Newton's method used techniques of functional analysis to prove the semilocal convergence of the method by means of the well-known majorant principle. To gain a deeper understanding of these techniques the authors return to the beginning and present a deep-detailed approach of Kantorovich's theory for Newton's method, where they include old results, for a historical perspective and for comparisons with new results, refine old results, and prove their most relevant results, where alternative approaches leading to new sufficient semilocal convergence criteria for Newton's method are given. The book contains many numerical examples involving nonlinear integral equations, two boundary value problems and systems of nonlinear equations related to numerous physical phenomena. The book is addressed to researchers in computational sciences, in general, and in approximation of solutions of nonlinear problems, in particular.