Eigenvalues of the Thurston operator

Abstract

Let $f:\hat{\mathbb C}\to \hat{\mathbb C}$ be a postcritically finite rational map. Let $\mathcal Q(\hat{\mathbb C})$ be the space of meromorphic quadratic differentials on $ \hat{\mathbb C}$ with simple poles. We study the set of eigenvalues of the pushforward operator $f_*:\mathcal Q(\hat{\mathbb C})\to \mathcal Q(\hat{\mathbb C})$. In particular, we show that when $f:\mathbb C \to \mathbb C$ is a unicritical polynomial of degree $D$ with periodic critical point, the eigenvalues of $f_*:\mathcal Q(\hat{\mathbb C})\to \mathcal Q(\hat{\mathbb C})$ are contained in the annulus $\bigl\{\frac{1}{4D}<|\lambda|<1\bigr\}$ and belong to $\frac{1}{D} \mathbb U$ where $\mathbb U$ is the group of algebraic units.