McMillan's area problem (Q5954552)

In this paper the authors prove a 1970 conjecture of \textit{J. E. McMillan} [Duke Math. J. 37, 725-739 (1970; Zbl 0222.30007)]. Let \(\Omega\) be a simply connected domain in the complex plane and let \(A\) denote the set of ideal accessible boundary points of \(\Omega\). Fix \(w_o \in \Omega\) and for each \(a\in A\) and \(r<|w_o-a|\), let \(\gamma (a,r)\subset \{z:|z-a|=r\}\) be the circular crosscut of \(\Omega\) separating \(a\) from \(w_o\) that can be joined to \(a\) by a Jordan arc contained in \(\Omega \cap \{z:|z-a|<r\}\). Let \(L(a,r)\) be the length of \(\gamma (a,r)\) and let \(A(a,r)=\int_0^r L(a,\rho) d\rho\) be the area bounded by \(\gamma(a,r)\) and a part of \(\partial \Omega\). McMillan showed that NEWLINE\[NEWLINE \limsup_{r\to 0}\frac{A(a,r)}{\pi r^2}\geq \frac{1}{2} NEWLINE\]NEWLINE almost everywhere on \(\partial \Omega\) with respect to harmonic measure (\(a.e.-\omega\)), and conjectured that NEWLINE\[NEWLINE \liminf_{r\to 0}\frac{A(a,r)}{\pi r^2}\leq \frac{1}{2},\text{ a.e. }-\omega. NEWLINE\]NEWLINE The authors used technical arguments to prove the conjecture. Their work is an important contribution to the theory of conformal mapping.