Abstract: Matings of polynomials form a very surprising construction of rational functions in which all sorts of bizarre phenomena appear, such as Peano curves. We'll show that the matings are actually very common. Much more surprising is that matings arise when iterating Newton's method in two dimensions. There are not many higher dimensional dynamical systems that are actually understood, and this provides maybe the most nontrivial example so fa.

John Hubbard (Cornell University)

General Seminar, 8.4.2004