On the connectivity of the Julia sets of meromorphic functions

We prove that every transcendental meromorphic map f with a disconnected Julia set has a weakly repelling fixed point. This implies that the Julia set of Newton's method for finding zeroes of an entire map is connected. Moreover, extending a result of Cowen for holomorphic self-maps of the disc, we show the existence of absorbing domains for holomorphic self-maps of hyperbolic regions whose iterates tend to a boundary point. In particular, the results imply that periodic Baker domains of Newton's method for entire maps are simply connected, which solves a well-known open question.