Related papers: On the rank of the Thurston pullback map

Thurston maps are branched self-coverings of the sphere whose critical points have finite forward orbits. We give combinatorial and algebraic characterizations of Thurston maps that are isotopic to expanding maps as "Levy-free" maps and as…

We extend Thurston's combinatorial criterion for postcritically finite rational maps to a class of rational maps with bounded type Siegel disks. The combinatorial characterization of this class of Siegel rational maps plays a special role…

A Thurston map is a branched covering map $f\colon S^2\to S^2$ that is postcritically finite. Mating of polynomials, introduced by Douady and Hubbard, is a method to geometrically combine the Julia sets of two polynomials (and their…

We study canonical decompositions of postcritically finite branched coverings of the 2-sphere, as defined by K.~Pilgrim. We show that every hyperbolic cycle in the decomposition does not have a Thurston obstruction. It is thus Thurston…

Among Thurston maps (orientation-preserving, postcritically finite branched coverings of the 2-sphere to itself), those that arise as subdivision maps of a finite subdivision rule form a special family. For such maps, we investigate…

We demonstrate that the question whether or not a given postcritically finite topological ramified covering map of the 2-sphere is Thurston equivalent to a rational map is algorithmically decidable.

We suggest a way to associate to a rational map of the Riemann sphere a three dimensional object called a hyperbolic orbifold 3-lamination. The relation of this object to the map is analogous to the relation of a hyperbolic 3-manifold to a…

In 1980s, Thurston established a topological characterization theorem for postcritically finite rational maps. In this paper, a decomposition theorem for a class of postcritically infinite branched covering termed `Herman map' is developed.…

Following Douady-Hubbard and Bartholdi-Nekrashevych, we give an algebraic formulation of Thurston's characterization of rational functions. The techniques developed are applied to the analysis of the dynamics on the set of free homotopy…

We use the theory of self-similar groups to enumerate all combinatorial classes of non-exceptional quadratic Thurston maps with fewer than five postcritical points. The enumeration relies on our computation that the corresponding maps on…

We show that in the family of degree $d\geq 2$ rational maps of the Riemann sphere, the closure of strictly postcritically finite maps contains a (relatively) Baire generic subset of maps displaying maximal non-statistical behavior: for a…

For each integer $m \geq 1$, we construct a finite-dimensional family of rational maps, given by Blaschke-type products, whose restriction to the unit circle consists of $2m$-multimodal maps. We show that every post-critically finite…

An orientation-preserving branched covering map $f\colon S^2 \to S^2$ is called a critically fixed Thurston map if $f$ fixes each of its critical points. It was recently shown that there is an explicit one-to-one correspondence between…

We develop a Thurston-like theory to characterize geometrically finite rational maps, then apply it to study pinching and plumbing deformations of rational maps. We show that in certain conditions the pinching path converges uniformly and…

Mating is an operation to construct a rational map f from two polynomials, which are not in conjugate limbs of the Mandelbrot set. When the Thurston Algorithm for the unmodified formal mating is iterated in the case of postcritical…

We study rational self-maps of $\mathbb{P}^{1}$ whose critical points all have finite forward orbit. Thurston's rigidity theorem states that outside a single well-understood family, there are finitely many such maps over $\mathbb{C}$ of…

A Thurston map is a branched covering map from $\S^2$ to $\S^2$ with a finite postcritical set. We associate a natural Gromov hyperbolic graph $\G=\G(f,\mathcal C)$ with an expanding Thurston map $f$ and a Jordan curve $\mathcal C$ on…

In this paper, we introduce cosine Thurston maps. In particular, we construct postsingularly finite topological cosine maps and focus on such maps with strictly preperiodic critical points. We use the techniques of Hubbard, Schleicher, and…

We study eigenvalues along periodic cycles of post-critically finite endomorphisms of $\mathbb{CP}^n$ in higher dimension. It is a classical result when $n = 1$ that those values are either $0$ or of modulus strictly bigger than $1$. It has…

We obtain an analog of the prime number theorem for a class of branched covering maps on the $2$-sphere $S^2$ called expanding Thurston maps, which are topological models of some non-uniformly expanding rational maps without any smoothness…