Two Types of Proximal Connected-Image Contractions in b-Metric Spaces and Applications to Fractional Differential Models

In this paper, we introduce a new class of proximal connected-image contractions in the framework of b-metric spaces endowed with a directed graph. By employing auxiliary functions, we establish several existence and uniqueness results for best proximity points and fixed points under appropriate contractive conditions. To demonstrate the applicability of our theoretical findings, we apply the main results to a class of fractional differential equations, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.