Thurston introduced emph{invariant (quadratic) laminations} in his 1984 preprint as a vehicle for understanding the connected Julia sets and the parameter space of quadratic polynomials. Important ingredients of his analysis of the angle doubling map
$sigma_2$ on the unit circle $mathbb{S}^1$ were the Central Strip Lemma, non-existence of wandering polygons, the transitivity of the first return map on vertices of periodic polygons, and the non-crossing of minors of quadratic invariant laminations. We use Thurstons methods to prove similar results for emph{unicritical} laminations of arbitrary degree $d$ and to show that the set of so-called emph{minors} of unicritical laminations themselves form a emph{Unicritical Minor Lamination} $mathrm{UML}_d$. In the end we verify the emph{Fatou conjecture} for the unicritical laminations and extend the emph{Lavaurs algorithm} onto $mathrm{UML}_d$.
Local similarity between the Mandelbrot set and quadratic Julia sets manifests itself in a variety of ways. We discuss a combinatorial one, in the language of geodesic laminations. More precisely, we compare quadratic invariant laminations representi
ng Julia sets with the so-called Quadratic Minor Lamination (QML) representing a locally connected model of the Mandelbrot set. Similarly to the construction of an invariant lamination by pullbacks of certain leaves, we describe how QML can be generated by properly understood pullbacks of certain minors. In particular, we show that the minors of all non-renormalizable quadratic laminations can be obtained by taking limits of pullbacks of minors from the main cardioid. This is the second, amended version of the paper, to appear in Contemporary Mathematics
We study the dynamics of the geodesic and horocycle flows of the unit tangent bundle $(hat M, T^1mathcal{F})$ of a compact minimal lamination $(M,mathcal F)$ by negatively curved surfaces. We give conditions under which the action of the affine group
generated by the joint action of these flows is minimal, and examples where this action is not minimal. In the first case, we prove that if $mathcal F$ has a leaf which is not simply connected, the horocyle flow is topologically transitive.
We provide a family of isolated tangent to the identity germs $f:(mathbb{C}^3,0) to (mathbb{C}^3,0)$ which possess only degenerate characteristic directions, and for which the lift of $f$ to any modification (with suitable properties) has only degene
rate characteristic directions. This is in sharp contrast with the situation in dimension $2$, where any isolated tangent to the identity germ $f$ admits a modification where the lift of $f$ has a non-degenerate characteristic direction. We compare this situation with the resolution of singularities of the infinitesimal generator of $f$, showing that this phenomenon is not related to the non-existence of complex separatrices for vector fields of Gomez-Mont and Luengo. Finally, we describe the set of formal $f$-invariant curves, and the associated parabolic manifolds, using the techniques recently developed by Lopez-Hernanz, Raissy, Ribon, Sanz Sanchez, Vivas.
Given a number field $K$ and a polynomial $f(z) in K[z]$ of degree at least 2, one can construct a finite directed graph $G(f,K)$ whose vertices are the $K$-rational preperiodic points for $f$, with an edge $alpha to beta$ if and only if $f(alpha) =
beta$. Restricting to quadratic polynomials, the dynamical uniform boundedness conjecture of Morton and Silverman suggests that for a given number field $K$, there should only be finitely many isomorphism classes of directed graphs that arise in this way. Poonen has given a conjecturally complete classification of all such directed graphs over $mathbb{Q}$, while recent work of the author, Faber, and Krumm has provided a detailed study of this question for all quadratic extensions of $mathbb{Q}$. In this article, we give a conjecturally complete classification like Poonens, but over the cyclotomic quadratic fields $mathbb{Q}(sqrt{-1})$ and $mathbb{Q}(sqrt{-3})$. The main tools we use are dynamical modular curves and results concerning quadratic points on curves.