Entire functions with no unbounded Fatou components

We introduce a new technique that allows us to make progress on two long standing conjectures in transcendental dynamics: Baker's conjecture that a transcendental entire function of order less than 1/2 has no unbounded Fatou components, and Eremenko's conjecture that all the components of the escaping set of an entire function are unbounded. We show that both conjectures hold for many transcendental entire functions whose zeros all lie on the negative real axis, in particular those of order less than 1/2. Our proofs use a classical distortion theorem based on contraction of the hyperbolic metric, together with new results which show that the images of certain curves must wind many times round the origin.

Let $f_i, i=1,2,\ldots,m $ be transcendental meromorphic functions of order less than $\frac{1}{2}$ with at most finitely many poles and at least one of them has positive lower order. Let $g = f_m \circ f_{m-1}\circ \cdots \circ f_1.$ Then either $g$ has no unbounded Fatou components or at least one unbounded Fatou component $g$ is multiply connected.

We prove that composite transcendental entire functions with certain gaps have no unbounded Fatou component.

Let f f be a transcendental entire function and let I ( f ) I(f) be the set of points whose iterates under f f tend to infinity. We show that I ( f ) I(f) has at least one unbounded component. In the case that f f has a Baker wandering domain, we show that I ( f ) I(f) is a connected unbounded set.

We define a quasi-Fatou component of a quasiregular map as a connected component of the complement of the Julia set. A domain in ℝd is called hollow if it has a bounded complementary component. We show that for each d ⩾ 2 there exists a quasiregular map of transcendental type f: ℝd → ℝd with a quasi-Fatou component which is hollow.Suppose that U is a hollow quasi-Fatou component of a quasiregular map of transcendental type. We show that if U is bounded, then U has many properties in common with a multiply connected Fatou component of a transcendental entire function. On the other hand, we show that if U is not bounded, then it is completely invariant and has no unbounded boundary components. We show that this situation occurs if J(f) has an isolated point, or if J(f) is not equal to the boundary of the fast escaping set. Finally, we deduce that if J(f) has a bounded component, then all components of J(f) are bounded.

In this paper, we prove that the ratio of the modulus of the iterates of two points in an escaping Fatou component could be bounded even if the orbit of the component contains a sequence of annuli whose moduli tend to infinity, and this cannot happen when the maximal modulus of the meromorphic function is uniformly large enough. In this way we extend certain related results for entire functions to meromorphic functions with infinitely many poles.

We study the iteration of transcendental self-maps of $\mathcal{C}^*:\=\mathcal{C}\{0}$, that is, holomorphic functions $\fnof:\mathcal{C}^*:\rarr\mathcal{C}^*$ for which both zero and infinity are essential singularities. We use approximation theory to construct functions in this class with escaping Fatou components, both wandering domains and Baker domains, that accumulate to $\{0},\infin$ in any possible way under iteration. We also give the first explicit examples of transcendental self-maps of $\mathcal{C}^*$ with Baker domains and with wandering domains. In doing so, we developed a sufficient condition for a function to have a simply connected escaping wandering domain. Finally, we remark that our results also provide new examples of entire functions with escaping Fatou components.

The fast escaping set, A(f), of a transcendental entire function f has begun to play a key role in transcendental dynamics. In many cases A(f) has the structure of a spider's web, which contains a sequence of fundamental loops. We investigate the structure of these fundamental loops for functions with a multiply connected Fatou component, and show that there exist transcendental entire functions for which some fundamental loops are analytic curves and approximately circles, while others are geometrically highly distorted. We do this by introducing a real-valued function which measures the rate of escape of points in A(f), and show that this function has a number of interesting properties.