Internal addresses in the Mandelbrot set and Galois groups of polynomials

Dierk Schleicher

Published 1994-11-21, updated 2012-06-11Version 3

We describe an interesting interplay between symbolic dynamics, the structure of the Mandelbrot set, permutations of periodic points achieved by analytic continuation, and Galois groups of certain polynomials. Internal addresses are a convenient and efficient way of describing the combinatorial structure of the Mandelbrot set, and of giving geometric meaning to the ubiquitous kneading sequences in human-readable form (Sections 3 and 4). A simple extension, \emph{angled internal addresses}, distinguishes combinatorial classes of the Mandelbrot set and in particular distinguishes hyperbolic components in a concise and dynamically meaningful way. This combinatorial description of the Mandelbrot set makes it possible to derive existence theorems for certain kneading sequences and internal addresses in the Mandelbrot set (Section~6) and to give an explicit description of the associated parameters. These in turn help to establish some algebraic results about permutations of periodic points and to determine Galois groups of certain polynomials (Section~7). Through internal addresses, various areas of mathematics are thus related in this manuscript, including symbolic dynamics and permutations, combinatorics of the Mandelbrot set, and Galois groups.