Generalizations of Douady's Magic
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
GENERALIZATIONS OF DOUADY'S MAGIC FORMULA ADAM EPSTEIN AND GIULIO TIOZZO Abstract. We generalize a combinatorial formula of Douady from the main car- dioid to other hyperbolic components H of the Mandelbrot set, constructing an explicit piecewise linear map which sends the set of angles of external rays landing on H to the set of angles of external rays landing on the real axis. 2 In the study of the dynamics of the quadratic family fc(z) := z + c, c 2 C, a central object of interest is the Mandelbrot set (n) M := fc 2 C :(fc (0))n≥0 is boundedg: The Mandelbrot set contains two notable smooth curves: namely, the intersection with the real axis M\R = [−2; 1=4], and the main cardioid of M, which is the set of parameters c for which fc has an attracting or indifferent fixed point in c (of course, this is smooth except at the cusp c = 1=4). Let R denote the set of angles of external rays landing on the real axis, and Ξ the set of angles of external rays landing on the main cardioid. The following \magic formula" is due to Douady (for a proof see [Bl]): Theorem 1 (Douady). The map 1 θ 1 2 + 4 if 0 ≤ θ < 2 T (θ) := 1 θ 1 4 + 4 if 2 < θ ≤ 1 sends Ξ into R. In this note, we prove the following generalization of Theorem 1 to other hyperbolic components. Let D(θ) := 2θ mod 1 denote the doubling map. Theorem 2. Let H be a hyperbolic component which belongs to a vein V of the Mandelbrot set, not in the 1=2-limb. Let AH , BH be the binary expansions of the root of H, and let δV be the complexity of V . Then the map δV ΦH (θ) := D (BH AH · θ) sends the set of external angles of rays landing on the upper part of H into the set R of angles of rays landing on the real axis. To illustrate such a formula, let us consider the \kokopelli" component of period 4, which has root of angles θ1 = 3=15 = :0011, θ2 = 4=15 = :0100, thus AH = 0011, University of Warwick, UK, [email protected]. University of Toronto, Canada, [email protected]. 1 2 ADAM EPSTEIN AND GIULIO TIOZZO Figure 1. The magic formula for the kokopelli component. The angle θ = 1=5 which lands at the root of its component is sent to ΦH (θ) = 21=40 which lands on the real axis. BH = 0100. This component lies on the principal vein with tip θ = 1=4, hence its complexity is δV = 1. Thus, 67 θ Φ (θ) := 1000011 · θ = + : H 128 128 Let us note that if H is the main cardioid, then δV = 0, AH = 0, BH = 1, hence we recover Douady's original formula from Theorem 1. Remarks. Note that the map ΦH is very far from being surjective: indeed, the set of angles of rays landing on a hyperbolic component has Hausdorff dimension zero, while the set R has dimension 1. During the preparation of this paper we have been informed of the generalization of Douady's formula by Bl´eand Cabrera [BC]. Let us remark that our formula is quite different, as the one in [BC] does not map into the real axis but rather into the GENERALIZATIONS OF DOUADY'S MAGIC FORMULA 3 0.70 0.65 0.60 0.55 0.50 0.45 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Figure 2. The graph of the function Ψ(x) discussed in Remark 4. The red dots correspond to points on the graph of Douady's magic formula function T = 'H for the main cardioid, the (thick) blue dots to the image of 'H for the rabbit component, and the green dots to the kokopelli component. tuned copies of the real axis inside small Mandelbrot sets. In fact, we will describe their formula and how it relates to ours in Section 1.2. Acknowledgements. We thank S. Koch and C. T. McMullen for useful conversa- tions. G.T. is partially supported by NSERC and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 1. Combinatorics of external rays 1.1. Real rays and the original formula. Consider the Riemann map ΦM : 0 C n D ! CnM, which is unique if we normalize it so that ΦM (1) = 1,ΦM (1) = 1. For each θ 2 R=Z, we define the external ray of angle θ as 2πiθ RM (θ) := fΦM (re ): r > 1g: 2πiθ The ray RM (θ) lands if there exists γ(θ) := limr!1+ ΦM (re ). It is conjectured that the ray RM (θ) lands for any θ 2 R=Z; to circumvent this issue, we define as RbM (θ) the impression of RM (θ), and the set of real angles as Rb := fθ 2 R=Z : RbM (θ) \ R 6= ;g: Conjecturally, this is exactly the set of angles for which the corresponding ray lands on the real axis. For further details, see e.g. [Za]. 4 ADAM EPSTEIN AND GIULIO TIOZZO The following lemma gives a characterization of Rb in terms of the dynamics of the doubling map. Lemma 3 ([Do]). The set of real angles equals n Rb := fθ 2 R=Z : jD (θ) − 1=2j ≥ jθ − 1=2j 8n 2 Ng: 1 Proof of Theorem 1. By symmetry, we can assume 0 < θ < 2 . Since the external ray n of angle θ lands on the main cardioid, then the forward orbit P := (D (θ))n2N of θ 1 θ the angle θ does not intersect the half-circle I = ( 2 + 2 ; 2 ) (the one which contains 0) (see [BS]). The preimage of I by the doubling map is the union of two intervals θ θ 1 θ 1 θ (− 4 ; 4 ) [ ( 2 − 4 ; 2 + 4 ). In particular, the forward orbit of θ does not intersect 1 θ 1 θ 0 0 θ J = ( 2 − 4 ; 2 + 4 ). Thus, if we look at the orbit of θ = T (θ), we have 2θ = 2 2= J and Dn(θ0) 2 P for any n ≥ 2, hence the forward orbit of θ0 does not intersect J, 0 hence θ is a real angle by Lemma 3. Remark 4. By Lemma 3, one recognizes that a way to map any angle θ 2 R=Z to the set of real angles is to consider the function 1 k 1 Ψ(x) := + inf D (x) − ; 2 k≥0 2 which indeed satisfies Ψ(R=Z) ⊆ Rb. As you can see from Figure 2, this function is discontinuous, while its graph \contains" the graphs of all the magic formula functions 'H given by Theorem 2 (which are indeed continuous) for all components H. 1.2. Tuning and the Bl´e-Cabreramagic formula. Given any hyperbolic com- ponent H in the Mandelbrot set, let us recall that there is a tuning map which sends the main cardioid to the hyperbolic component H, and the Mandelbrot set to a small copy of itself which contains H. In order to define the map precisely, let aH = :a1 : : : ak < bH = :b1 : : : bk denote the two external angles of rays landing at the root of H, and denote AH = a1 : : : ak and BH = b1 : : : bk the two corresponding finite binary words. Moreover, denote 0 0 aH = :a1 : : : akb1 : : : bk and bH = :b1 : : : bka1 : : : ak. The tuning map TH on the set of external angles is now defined as follows. If θ = .12 ::: is the binary expansion of θ, then the angle TH (θ) has binary expansion TH (θ) = :A1 A2 ::: where A0 = AH , A1 = BH . Then, the set ΞH := TH (Ξ) is the set of rays landing on the boundary of H. If θ 2 T = R=Z has infinite binary expansion (i.e. it is not a dyadic number) and S = s1 : : : sn is a finite word on the alphabet f0; 1g, we denote by S · θ the element of T n X −k −n S · θ := sk2 + 2 θ k=1 i.e. the point whose binary expansion is the concatenation of S and the binary expansion of θ. Recall that tuning behaves well with respect to concatenation, namely GENERALIZATIONS OF DOUADY'S MAGIC FORMULA 5 for any S; H and θ we have TH (S · θ) = TH (S) · TH (θ): We define the small real vein associated to H, and denote it as RH , to be the real vein of the small Mandelbrot set associated to H. Let us denote as RH the set of external angles of rays landing on RH , and as RbH the set of external angles of rays whose impression intersects RH . Clearly, RH0 = R if H0 is the main cardioid, and RH0 = R. −1 Proposition 5 (Bl´e-Cabrera[BC]). The map TH := TH ◦ T ◦ TH maps ΞH into the small real vein RbH . Moreover, this map (restricted to ΞH ) is piecewise affine: in fact, it can be written in terms of binary expansions as TH (θ) = BH AH · θ 0 if θ 2 (aH ; aH ), and TH (θ) = AH BH · θ 0 if θ 2 (bH ; bH ). Proof. By construction, the tuning map TH :Ξ n f0g ! ΞH n faH ; bH g is a bijection, so the first statement follows by looking at the diagram: T Ξ / Rb TH TH TH ΞH / RbH : Moreover, since T (θ) = 10 · θ for θ < 1=2 and tuning behaves nicely with respect to concatenation, we have −1 TH (θ) = TH (10 · TH (θ)) = TH (10) · θ which proves the second claim.