Indecomposable continua and the Julia sets of polynomials. II (Q2488859)

The authors find necessary and sufficient conditions for the connected Julia set of a polynomial of degree \(d\geq 2\) to be an indecomposable continuum. One necessary and sufficient condition is that the impression of some prime end (external ray) of the unbounded complementary domain of the Julia set \(J\) has nonempty interior in \(J\). Another is that every prime end has as its impression the entire Julia set. The latter answers a question posed in 1993 by the second and third author [\textit{J. C. Mayer, J. T. Rogers jun.}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 117, No. 3, 795--802 (1993; Zbl 0773.30005)]. At the same time it is proved that no component of \(J\) can contain the principal continuum of more than one prime end of \(U_\infty\), and prime ends corresponding to Lake-Wada channels of \(U_\infty\) form a residual in \(\partial \mathbb D_\infty\). The authors show by the example \(f(z)=z^2-\frac {1}{16z^2}\) that, contrary to the case for a polynomial Julia set, the image of an indecomposable subcontinuum of the Julia set of a rational function need not be indecomposable.