On the Bank-Laine conjecture (Q2628332)

In this paper, the authors study the Bank-Laine conjecture. Bank and Laine conjectured that if \(w_1\) and \(w_2\) are linear independent solutions of the following second order linear differential equation \[ w''+Aw=0, \] where \(A\) is a transcendental entire function, then \(\max\{\lambda(w_1),\lambda(w_2)\}=\infty\) whenever the order \(\rho(A)\) is not an integer, where \(\lambda(w)\) is the exponent of convergence of the zeros of \(w\). The authors give a negative answer to the conjecture by proving the following result: Let \(p\) and \(q\) be odd integers. Then there exists an entire function \(A\) of order \[ \rho(A)= 1+\frac{\log^2(p/q)}{4\pi^2} \] for which the above equation has two linearly independent solutions \(w_1\) and \(w_2\) such that \(\lambda(w_1)=\rho(A)\), while \(w_2\) has no zeros.