Rational parameter rays of the Mandelbrot set

We give a new proof that all external rays of the Mandelbrot set at rational angles land, and of the relation between the external angle of such a ray and the dynamics at the landing point. Our proof is different from the original one, given by Douady and Hubbard and refined by Lavaurs, in several ways: it replaces analytic arguments by combinatorial ones; it does not use complex analytic dependence of the polynomials with respect to parameters and can thus be made to apply for non-complex analytic parameter spaces; this proof is also technically simpler. Finally, we derive several corollaries about hyperbolic components of the Mandelbrot set. Along the way, we introduce partitions of dynamical and parameter planes which are of independent interest, and we interpret the Mandelbrot set as a symbolic parameter space of kneading sequences and internal addresses.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figure

On Newton's Method for Entire Functions

The Newton map N_f of an entire function f turns the roots of f into attracting fixed points. Let U be the immediate attracting basin for such a fixed point of N_f. We study the behavior of N_f in a component V of C\U. If V can be surrounded by an invariant curve within U and satisfies the condition that each point in the extended plane has at most finitely many preimages in V, we show that V contains another immediate basin of N_f or a virtual immediate basin. A virtual immediate basin is an unbounded invariant Fatou component in which the dynamics converges to infty through an absorbing set.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. Changes in Version 2: Sharpened the result in Section