On a problem of Bharanedhar and Ponnusamy involving planar harmonic mappings (Q1799898)

The authors investigate the class of harmonic mappings in the unit disk \(\mathbb{D}\). It consists of functions of the form \(f = h+\overline{g}\) where \(h\) and \(g\) are holomorphic in \(\mathbb{D}\). Let \(S^0_\mathcal{H}\) be the subclass in the set of harmonic mappings which consists of the univalent mappings satisfying the normalization conditions \(f(0) = f_z(0) - 1 = f_{\overline{z}}(0)=0\). Here \(f_{{z}}\) and \(f_{\overline{z}}\) are the formal partial derivatives of \(f\) with respect to \(z\) and \(\overline{z}\). For a fixed \(\beta\in (1, 3/2)\), let \(\mathcal{P}(\beta) =\{f = h+\overline{g} \in \mathcal{H} : g'(z)=zh'(z)\) and \(\Re ( 1+ zh''(z)/h'(z)) < \beta\), \(z \in \mathbb{D} \}\). \textit{S. V. Bharanedhar} and \textit{S. Ponnusamy} [Rocky Mt. J. Math. 44, No. 3, 753--777 (2014; Zbl 1298.30001)] suggested the problem to determine the value \(\inf\{\beta\in (1, 3/2) : \mathcal{P}(\beta) \subset S^0_\mathcal{H} \}\). The authors give an example showing that for every \(\beta\in (1, 3/2)\) the class \(\mathcal{P}(\beta)\) contains non-univalent functions. The last part of the paper is mainly devoted to the investigation of the class \(\mathcal{M}(\alpha,\zeta,n)\) where \(-1/2\leq \alpha<1\), \(n\in \mathbb{N}\), and \(\zeta\in \mathbb{C}\), \(|\zeta|\leq 1/(2n-1)\). It consists of harmonic mappings of the form \(f = h+\overline{g}\) where \(h\) and \(g\) satisfy the conditions: \(\Re ( 1 + z h''(z)/h'(z))>\alpha\) and \(g'(z)=\zeta z^nh'(z)\). The authors obtain some coefficient estimates, and establish covering and area theorems.