On limiting directions of entire solutions of complex differential-difference equations (Q6167223)

Let \(n\geq1\) and \(m\) be integers. Let \(f\) be a transcendental entire function, and let \(p_{\lambda_k}(z,f)\), \(k=0, 1, \dots, n\), be distinct differential-difference monomials defined by \(p_{\lambda_k}(z,f)=b_{\lambda_k}\prod_{i=0}^n\prod_{j=0}^mf^{(i)}(z+c_i)^{\lambda_{k_i,j}}\), where \(b_{\lambda_k}\) are nonzero constants, \(c_0=0\), \(c_1\), \dots, \(c_n\) are distinct complex constants. Denote by \(d_k(\lambda)=\sum_{i=0}^n\sum_{j=0}^m \lambda_{k_i,j}\) the degree of the monomial \(p_{\lambda_k}(z,f)\). The authors consider entire solutions of differential-difference equation of the form \[f^n+\sum_{k=0}^n a_{\lambda_k}(z)p_{\lambda_k}(z,f)=h(z),\;\;\;\;\; (1)\] where \(a_{\lambda_k}(z)\) are entire functions of growth smaller than that of the transcendental entire function \(h(z)\). The ray \(\arg z=\theta\) is said to be a limiting direction of Julia set \(\mathcal{J}(f)\) of \(f\) if there is an unbounded sequence \(\{z_n\}\subset \mathcal{J}(f)\) such that \(\lim_{n\to\infty} \arg z_n =\theta\). The set of all Julia limiting directions in \([0,2\pi)\) of \(f\) is denoted by \(\Delta(f)\). A value \(\theta\in [0, 2\pi)\) is said to be a transcendental direction of \(f\) if there exists an unbounded sequence of \(\{z_n\}\) such that \(\lim_{n\to\infty} \arg z_n =\theta\) and \(\lim_{n\to\infty} \log\vert f(z_n)\vert /\log\vert z_n\vert =\infty\). Denote by \(TD(f)\) the union of all transcendental directions of \(f\). The authors obtained several results and gave examples. One of the main results is the following. Suppose that \(h(z)\) in (1) is of finite lower order and \(p_{\lambda_k}(z,f)\) in (1) satisfies \(\max_{k=\{0, \dots, n\}} \{\deg_{p_{\lambda_k}}=d_k(\lambda)\}\leq n-1\). Then, for every nonzero transcendental entire solution \(f\) of (1), we have \(TD(D^n_qf)\bigcap TD(h)\subset \Delta(D^n_qf)\) and \[{\text{ meas}}(\Delta(D^n_qf))\geq {\text{ meas}}\left(TD(D^n_qf)\bigcap TD(h)\right)\geq \min\{2\pi, \pi/\mu(h)\}, \] where \(\mu(h)\) is the lower order of \(h\) and \(D_q\) is the \(q\)-difference Jackson operator with \(q\in \mathbb{C}\setminus\{0,1\}\).