Quasiregular dynamics on the n-sphere

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.

For a quasiregular mapping $$f:{\mathbb {R}}^n \rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}^n$$ , with $$n\ge 2$$ , a Julia limiting direction $$\theta \in S^{n-1}$$ arises from a sequence $$(x_n)_{n=1}^{\infty }$$ contained in the Julia set of f, with $$|x_n| \rightarrow \infty $$ and $$x_n/|x_n| \rightarrow \theta $$ . Julia limiting directions have been extensively studied for entire and meromorphic functions in the plane. In this paper, we focus on Julia limiting directions in higher dimensions. First, we give conditions under which every direction is a Julia limiting direction. Our methods show that if a quasi-Fatou component contains a sectorial domain, then there is a polynomial bound on the growth in the sector. Second, we give a sufficient, but not necessary, condition in $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ for a set $$E\subset S^2$$ to be the set of Julia limiting directions for a quasiregular mapping. The methods here will require showing that certain sectorial domains in $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ are ambient quasiballs. This is a contribution to the notoriously hard problem of determining which domains are the image of the unit ball $${\mathbb {B}}^3$$ under an ambient quasiconformal mapping of $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ onto itself.

This article concerns the iteration of quasiregular mappings on Rd and entire functions on C. It is shown that there are always points at which the iterates of a quasiregular map tend to infinity at a controlled rate. Moreover, an asymptotic rate of escape result is proved that is new even for transcendental entire functions. Let f:Rd→Rd be quasiregular of transcendental type. Using novel methods of proof, we generalise results of Rippon and Stallard in complex dynamics to show that the Julia set of f contains points at which the iterates fn tend to infinity arbitrarily slowly. We also prove that, for any large R, there is a point x with modulus approximately R such that the growth of |fn(x)| is asymptotic to the iterated maximum modulus Mn(R,f).

We study, for the first time, the maximum modulus set of a quasiregular map. It is easy to see that these sets are necessarily closed, and contain at least one point of each modulus. Blumenthal showed that for entire maps these sets are either the whole plane, or a countable union of analytic curves. We show that in the quasiregular case, by way of contrast, any closed set containing at least one point of each modulus can be attained as the maximum modulus set of a quasiregular map. These examples are all of polynomial type. We also show that, subject to an additional constraint, such sets can even be attained by quasiregular maps of transcendental type.