Families of meromorphic functions avoiding continuous functions (Q5943741)

The well-known normality criterion of Montel states that if \(\mathcal F\) is a family of meromorphic functions in a domain \(D \subset \widehat{\mathbb{C}}\) which omits three distinct values \(a\), \(b\), \(c \in \widehat{\mathbb{C}}\) (that means \(f(D) \subset \widehat{\mathbb{C}} \setminus \{a,b,c\}\) for all \(f \in \mathcal F\)), then \(\mathcal F\) is normal in \(D\). The purpose of this article is to generalize Montel's theorem by replacing \(a\), \(b\), \(c\) by three continuous functions. In order to state the main result, the following definition is needed. Let \(\mathcal G\) be any family of functions in \(D\) with values in \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\). The functions in \(\mathcal G\) avoid each other if any two distinct functions \(f\), \(g \in \mathcal G\) have disjoint graphs, that is \(f(z) \neq g(z)\) for all \(z \in D\). If \(\varphi\) is a further function in \(D\), then \(\varphi\) avoids \(\mathcal G\), if \(\varphi(z) \neq f(z)\) for all \(f \in \mathcal G\) and all \(z \in D\). Now, the following theorem is proved. Theorem. Let \(\mathcal F\) be a family of meromorphic functions in a domain \(D \subset \widehat{\mathbb{C}}\). Let \(h_1\), \(h_2\) and \(h_3\) be continuous functions in \(D\) with values in \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\) which avoid each other in \(D\). If each \(f \in \mathcal F\) avoids each \(h_j\) in \(D\) for \(j=1,2,3\), then \(\mathcal F\) is a normal family in \(D\). The authors give two different proofs of this theorem. The first one is based on Ahlfors' theory of covering surfaces. The second proof uses Zalcman's lemma, Picard's theorem, the existence of the local degree of continuous maps, and some facts on the local behavior of meromorphic functions. All these latter tools extend to quasimeromorphic functions as well, so that this approach leads to an \(n\)-dimensional version of the above theorem for quasimeromorphic functions in a domain \(D \subset \mathbb{R}^n\).