Fixed Fatou component classification

A periodic Fatou component of a rational map is an immediate attracting basin, an immediate parabolic basin, a Siegel disc, or a Herman ring. Attracting and parabolic basins capture critical orbits, while the boundaries of rotation domains lie in the closure of the postcritical set.

Every immediate basin of an attracting fixed point of a rational map contains a critical point. Otherwise the map on the basin would be an unbranched covering; lifting it to the unit disc would give an automorphism fixing a point, contradicting strict contraction at the attracting fixed point.

With the closed-set convention, the postcritical set of a rational map $f$ iswhere $\mathrm{Crit}(f)$ is the set of critical points of a rational map. Thus one starts at the critical values, takes all their forward orbits, and then takes the closure. Some authors omit the closure; stating the convention matters when a critical orbit accumulates without becoming periodic.

For $f(z)=z^2-1$, the critical points of a rational map are zero and infinity. Their forward images give $P(f)=\{-1,0,\infty \}$, because $0\mapsto -1\mapsto 0$ and infinity is fixed. The postcritical set combines all critical orbits, rather than recording only one chosen starting point.

A parabolic basin consists of points that eventually enter an attracting direction of a parabolic cycle. For a suitable return iterate, an attracting petal is a forward-invariant open region with the periodic point on its boundary, and the return iterates tend to that point there. The union of its inverse images is an open parabolic basin contained in the Fatou set; the Fatou components meeting the attracting petals form the immediate basin. Its boundary lies in the Julia set.

The parabolic cycle itself and points that land exactly on it belong to the Julia set, so mere pointwise convergence to that cycle is not the definition of the open parabolic basin. For $f(z)=z+z^2$, zero is a fixed point with periodic-orbit multiplier one. Small negative real starting values approach zero without reaching it, whereas zero itself is a Julia set point. The reflected example parabolic disk for z minus z squared gives an explicit forward-invariant region and a quantitative convergence bound.^[ref]

For $P(z)=z-z^2$, the disc $\Delta =\{|z-1/2|<1/2\}$ corresponds under $w=1/z$ to $\Re w>1$. The transformed map is $T(w)=w+1+1/(w-1)$, so $\Re T(w)>\Re w+1$. Thus $P(\Delta )\subseteq \Delta$ and $|P^n(z)|<1/(n+1)$ there. The Fatou component $U$ containing the disc has $P^n\to 0$ locally uniformly by normality and the identity theorem. It is forward invariant. The point $1/4$ in the disc has the entire fiber $\{1/2\}$, so the Fatou component containing an entire fiber is completely invariant criterion gives $P^{-1}(U)=U$. Zero itself is a Julia point: a normal subsequential limit near zero would be zero by the disc limit, but every iterate has derivative one at zero, contradicting derivative convergence.

Every Fatou component of a rational map of degree at least two is eventually periodic. Thus the periodic-component classification accounts for the entire Fatou set.