Quasisymmetries of Sierpiński carpet Julia sets (Q305723)

It is known that Sierpiński carpets (topological spaces homeomorphic to the standard Sierpiński carpet fractal) can arise as Julia sets of rational maps. For example, in every neighbourhood of \(0\), there are infinitely many parameters \(\lambda\) such that the Julia sets of \(f_\lambda(z)=z^2+\lambda/z^2\) are Sierpiński carpets on which \(f_\lambda\) are not topologically conjugate. Generally, Sierpiński carpets have large groups of self-homeomorphisms. On the other hand, it turns out that there are much less quasisymmetric homeomorphisms (given by quasiconformal maps). A rational map of the Riemann sphere is called postcritically-finite if every its critical point has a finite orbit. The main result of the paper is as follows. Let \(f\) and \(g\) be postcritically-finite rational maps whose Julia sets \(J(f)\) and \(J(g)\) are Sierpiński carpets. If \(\xi\) is a quasisymmetric homeomorphism \(J(f)\) onto \(J(g)\), then \(\xi\) is the restriction to \(J(f)\) of a Möbius transformation. As a corollary, if \(J(f)\) is a Sierpiński carpet for a postcritically-finite map \(f\), then the group of quasisymmetries of \(J(f)\) is finite.