Local connectivity of the Julia set of real polynomials

Genadi Levin, Sebastian van Strien

Published 1995-04-26Version 1

One of the main questions in the field of complex dynamics is the question whether the Mandelbrot set is locally connected, and related to this, for which maps the Julia set is locally connected. In this paper we shall prove the following Main Theorem: Let $f$ be a polynomial of the form $f(z)=z^d +c$ with $d$ an even integer and $c$ real. Then the Julia set of $f$ is either totally disconnected or locally connected. In particular, the Julia set of $z^2+c$ is locally connected if $c \in [-2,1/4]$ and totally disconnected otherwise.