Baker's conjecture and Eremenko's conjecture for functions with negative zeros (Q393420)

The authors investigate complex dynamics of entire functions of order less than \(1/2\) and obtain some results on Baker's conjecture and Eremenko's conjecture. Baker's conjecture states that the Fatou set of an entire function has no unbounded components whenever the order of the function is less than 1/2 or even whenever the function has order at most 1/2 and minimal type. Eremenko's conjecture states that the escaping set \(I(f)=\{z: f_n(z)\to\infty \;\text{as}\;n\to\infty \}\) has no bounded components. The authors mainly consider transcendental entire functions of the form \[ f(z)=cz^{p_0}\prod_{n=1}^\infty\left(1+\frac{z}{a_n}\right)^{p_n}, \tag{1} \] where \(p_n\in \{0, 1, \dots\}\), for \(n\geq 0\), \(c\in \mathbb R\setminus\{0\}\), and the sequence \((a_n)\) consists of real positive strictly increasing numbers. Denote by \(M(r)=M(r,f)\) and \(m(r)=m(r,f)\) the maximum modulus and the minimum modulus of \(f\), respectively. A set \(E\) is said to be a spider's web if \(E\) is connected and there exists a sequence of simply connected domains \(G_n\) such that \(\partial G_n\subset E\), \(G_n \subset G_{n+1}\) for \(n\in \mathbb N\) and \(\bigcup_{n\in\mathbb N}G_n=\mathbb C\). For example, the set \(A_R(f)=\{z: |f^{n}(z)\geq M^n(R),\;\text{for}\;n\in \mathbb N\}\), which is a subset of the escaping set, has the spider's web structure, where \(R>0\) is chosen so that \(M(r)>r\) for \(r>R\). The main result in this article is the following: Let \(f(z)\) be a transcendental entire function of the form (1). In addition, suppose that there exist \(m > 1\) and \(R_0 > 0\) such that, for all \(r\geq R_0\), there exists \(\rho\in (r, r^m)\) with \(m(\rho)\geq M(r)\). Then: (a) there are no unbounded components of \(F(f)\); (b) the set \(I(f)\) is a spider's web, and hence is connected; (c) if, in addition, \(f\) has no multiply connected Fatou components, then \(J(f)\) and \(I(f)\cap J(f)\) are both spiders' webs. The authors use a classical distortion theorem based on contraction of the hyperbolic metric, together with the new techniques of the winding of image curves.