A note on entire functions and their differences (Q2249054)

Let \(f\) and \(g\) be two nonconstant meromorphic functions and let \(a \in \mathbb{C}\). We say that \(f\) and \(g\) share the value \(a\) CM (resp. IM) provided that \(f - a\) and \(g - a\) have the same zeros counting multiplicities (resp. ignoring multiplicities). Recently a number of papers have been written on the uniqueness of entire and meromorphic functions where the derivatives are replaced by differences. The present paper is one among those. The authors consider the uniqueness of an entire function \(f\) when it shares with the forward difference \(\Delta^{n}_{\eta}f\) an entire function \(a(z)\), having order less than \(1\), CM. Under the hypothesis of the theorem, the authors prove that \(f\) must be an exponential function.