Invisible tricorns in real slices of rational maps (Q1995568)

Up to a Möbius transformation an anti-holomorphic involution in the complex projective is either \(z\mapsto \bar{z}\) or \(z\mapsto \frac{1}{\bar{z}}\). In this paper the authors study two families of rational maps preserving a real structure. The first family is given by the Newton maps \[ N_a(z)=z-\frac{f_a(z)}{f_a'(z)} \] where \(f_a(z)=(z-1)(z+1)(z-a)(z-\bar{a})\). The map \(N_a\) has real coefficients. Thus it is compatible with the real structure defined by \(z\mapsto \bar{z}\). It has six critical points; four of them are \(1,-1,a,\bar{a}\) and are super-attracting. Here only those parameters \(a\) for which the two remaining critical points are complex conjugate and distinct are considered. The second family is given by the maps \[ f_q(z)=z^2\frac{q-z}{1+\bar{q}z}. \] These maps are compatible with the real structure defined by \(z\mapsto \frac{1}{\bar{z}}\). The authors study hyperbolic components of parameter space of these two families. They are mainly interested in those components whose corresponding maps have a unique attracting cycle compatible with the real structure, i.e., invariant under the anti-holomorphic involution. Such a component is called invisible if it has a boundary arc that does not touch other hyperbolic components and is not bifurcating. The authors exploit the analogy between these maps and quadratic anti-holomorphic polynomials to prove various properties of these invisible components.