Periodic Orbits, Externals Rays and the Mandelbrot Set: An Expository Account

John W. Milnor

Published 1999-05-26Version 1

A key point in Douady and Hubbard's study of the Mandelbrot set $M$ is the theorem that every parabolic point $c\ne 1/4$ in $M$ is the landing point for exactly two external rays with angle which are periodic under doubling. This note will try to provide a proof of this result and some of its consequences which relies as much as possible on elementary combinatorics, rather than on more difficult analysis. It was inspired by section 2 of the recent thesis of Schleicher (see also Stony Brook IMS preprint 1994/19, with E. Lau), which contains very substantial simplifications of the Douady-Hubbard proofs with a much more compact argument, and is highly recommended. The proofs given here are rather different from those of Schleicher, and are based on a combinatorial study of the angles of external rays for the Julia set which land on periodic orbits. The results in this paper are mostly well known; there is a particularly strong overlap with the work of Douady and Hubbard. The only claim to originality is in emphasis, and the organization of the proofs.