Repelling periodic points and landing of rays for post-singularly bounded exponential maps (Q486807)

This article is about the accessibility property of hyperbolic points of post-singularly bounded polynomial and exponential maps. For many entire functions, including polynomials and exponential maps, it is possible to define rays as arcs to infinity, which consists of points escaping to infinity under iteration and whose orbits follows a pattern specific to the ray. This pattern is defined in terms of a sequence of sets from a fixed dynamical partition near \(\infty\). For polynomials those rays correspond to the usual arcs of constant argument defined by the Böttcher isomorphism. For the exponential maps, those rays are called hairs and constitute, with some end points, the escaping set of the map (see [\textit{D. Schleicher} and \textit{J. Zimmer}, J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 67, No. 2, 380--400 (2003; Zbl 1042.30012)] or Section 3 of the article). A ray is said to land, if it has a unique finite end point. The end point of a landing ray is then called accessible. Accessibility of periodic points plays an important role in the description of the bifurcation loci of families of maps; see, among other references, [\textit{A. Douady} and \textit{J. H. Hubbard}, Publ. Math. Orsay 84--02, 75 p. (1984; Zbl 0552.30018); \textit{D. Schleicher}, Internal addresses in the Mandelbrot set and irreducibility of polynomials. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University (PhD Thesis) (1994); \textit{J. B. Kiwi}, Rational rays and critical portraits of complex polynomials. Stony Brook, NY: Stony Brook University (PhD Thesis) (1997); \textit{J. Milnor}, in: Géométrie complexe et systèmes dynamiques. Colloque en l'honneur d'Adrien Douady à l'occasion du soixantième anniversaire, Orsay, France, du 3 au 8 juillet 1995. Paris: Astérisque. 277--333 (2000; Zbl 0941.30016); \textit{D. Schleicher}, in: Géométrie complexe et systèmes dynamiques. Colloque en l'honneur d'Adrien Douady à l'occasion du soixantième anniversaire, Orsay, France, du 3 au 8 juillet 1995. Paris: Astérisque. 405--443 (2000; Zbl 0941.30015); \textit{C. L. Petersen} and \textit{G. Ryd}, Lond. Math. Soc. Lect. Note Ser. 274, 161--172 (2000; Zbl 1062.37038); \textit{D. Schleicher}, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 72, 477--517 (2004; Zbl 1074.30025)] for polynomial maps and for the exponential family, e.g., [\textit{L. Rempe} and \textit{D. Schleicher}, Invent. Math. 175, No. 1, 103--135 (2009; Zbl 1165.37014)]. This article gives new proofs of older results but also new results about the accessibility of points in the Julia sets of some polynomial and exponential maps. One of the main results, Theorem A, is the following. Let \(f\) be either a polynomial or an exponential map with bounded postsingular set. Then any repelling periodic point of \(f\) is the landing point of at least one and at most finitely many dynamics rays. Moreover, the rays landing on a periodic point are periodic and have the same period, multiple of the period of the periodic point. This result is classical in the case of polynomials [\textit{A. Eh. Eremenko} and \textit{G. M. Levin}, Ukr. Math. J. 41, No. 11, 1258--1262 (1989; Zbl 0704.30033); translation from Ukr. Mat. Zh. 41, No. 11, 1467--1471 (1989); \textit{J. H. Hubbard}, in: Topological methods in modern mathematics. Proceedings of a symposium in honor of John Milnor's sixtieth birthday, held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA, June 14 -- June 21, 1991. Houston, TX: Publish or Perish, Inc. 467--511 (1993; Zbl 0797.58049); \textit{C. L. Petersen}, Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 13, No. 4, 785--806 (1993; Zbl 0802.30022)] and has been extended to the unbounded postsingular set case by Eremenko and Levin [loc. cit.]. This result extends previous results [\textit{D. Schleicher} and \textit{J. Zimmer}, Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn., Math. 28, No. 2, 327--354 (2003; Zbl 1088.30017)] for some exponential functions to a wider set of parameters. Moreover it is based on a new proof which has the advantage of being potentially applicable to other families of maps. The proof of the landing properties relies on finding a piece of ray near the potential landing point, and then considering its pullbacks on a neighborhood. By contraction and extension, limit rays must land on the repelling point. For that to apply, one needs some uniform bound on the size of the fundamental piece of rays. In the case of exponential maps this is a consequence of a careful estimate on the ``straightness'' of the rays. Using the same techniques as for theorem A, the authors also prove their second main result, Theorem B. It states that the points in hyperbolic sets of polynomials and exponential maps with bounded postsingular set are accessible. An important consequence (Corollary C) is that, for such exponential maps, every point in the postsingular set, including the singular value itself, are accessible. Theorem A implies that, in the exponential family, non-recurrent parameters with bounded postsingular set always belong to parabolic wakes (Corollary 4.13). The proof uses a combinatorial argument coming from the polynomial case [\textit{D. Schleicher}, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 72, 477--517 (2004; Zbl 1074.30025)]. It is worth to note that Section 3 of the article contains an interesting description of some of the properties of the rays of exponential maps. Other consequences of this work, including the rigidity of non-parabolic exponential parameters with bounded postsingular set, are further investigated by the first author in [\textit{A. M. Benini}, Nonlinearity 28, No. 7, 2003--2025 (2015; Zbl 1359.37102)].