The real Fatou conjecture (AM-144)

In 1920, Pierre Fatou expressed the conjecture that--except for special cases--all critical points of a rational map of the Riemann sphere tend to periodic orbits under iteration. This conjecture remains the main open problem in the dynamics of iterated maps. For the logistic family x- ax(1-x), it can be interpreted to mean that for a dense set of parameters ""a,"" an attracting periodic orbit exists. The same question appears naturally in science, where the logistic family is used to construct models in physics, ecology, and economics. In this book, Jacek Graczyk and Grzegorz Swiatek provi