On the topology of wandering Julia components (Q632349)

Let \(f\) be a rational map with a disconnected Julia set. In this paper, the authors investigate the topological structure of wandering Julia components of \(f\). In fact, they prove that if the Julia set of the rational map \(f\) has a disconnected Julia set, then all but countably many wandering Julia components have a simple topology, namely, they have one or two complementary components. The remaining countable subset \(\Sigma\) is backward invariant. The main tool the authors use is the well-known no-wandering-domains-theorem of Sullivan. The original general idea is as follows. At first, using the Jordan curve theorem and the Riemann-Hurwitz Formula, they reveal the relationship between the connectivity \(C(K)\) of any non-empty compact connected set \(K\subset\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\) and \(C(K^{'})\) of any connected component \(K^{'}\) of \(f^{-1}(K)\), and establish a correspondence \(f_{*}\) between the components of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus K^{'}\) and \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus K\). That is Lemma 2.1. After that, they fix a normalization (up to conformal conjugacy) so that \(f(\infty)=\infty\). Let \(I\) be the set of all critical values of \(f\) and \(\infty\). For any Julia component \(J\) disjoint from \(I\), they define a separating number \(S_{I}(J)\) in terms of the number of components of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus J\) intersecting \(I\). Applying Lemma 2.1 to the wandering Julia components \(J\) with \(S_{I}(J)=1\) (i.e, there is exactly one component of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus J\) intersecting \(I\)) yields Lemma 2.2 (a). Using Sullivan's theorem mentioned above, for the wandering Julia components \(J\) with \(S_{I}(J)\leq2\) and \(\sharp\; \text{orb}(J)\cap \mathcal {S}_{2}<\infty\) (i.e, there are at most two components of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus J\) intersecting \(I\) and there are finitely many \(n\in\mathbb{N}\) such that \(S_{I}(f^{n}(J))=2\)) one obtains Lemma 2.2(b), and Lemma 2.2(c) is an immediate consequence of Lemma 2.2(b). As a result, Theorem 1.1(a) and (b) are proved by Lemmas 2.2(b) and 2.1, respectively. To prove Theorem 1.1(c), the authors focus on the wandering Julia components \(J\in \mathcal {S}_{2}\cap\mathcal {C}_{3}\), i.e, there are exactly two components of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus J\) intersecting \(I\) and the connectivity number \(C(J)\) of \(J\) is more than 2. According to Lemma 2.2(c), every Julia component \(J\in \mathcal {S}_{2}\cap\mathcal {C}_{3}\) returns eventually to \(\mathcal {S}_{2}\cap\mathcal {C}_{3}\) under the iterations of \(f\). Denote by \(s(J)>0\) the minimal return time. Define \(V(J)\) to be the unique bounded component of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus J\) intersecting \(I\) and \(U(J)\) the unique bounded component of \(\widehat{\mathbb{C}}\setminus J\) intersecting \(f^{-s(J)}(I)\). The authors define an equivalence relation on the set \(\mathcal {V}\) of all wandering Julia components \(J\in \mathcal {S}_{2}\cap\mathcal {C}_{3}\) with \(V(J)\neq U(J)\) and a total ordering \(\prec\) in each equivalence class \(\mathcal {V}_{i}\). By considering each equivalence class \(\mathcal {V}_{i}\), Lemma 2.6 follows, from which the authors obtain Lemma 2.7 and 2.8, which imply Theorem 1.1(c). Finally, two sufficient conditions for a Julia component to be a point are provided and quasi-conformal surgery is used to construct several examples describing different topological structures of Julia components.