Invisible Tricorns in Real Slices of Rational Maps

Abstract

One of the conspicuous features of real slices of bicritical rational maps is the existence of Tricorn-type hyperbolic components. Such a hyperbolic component is called invisible if the non-bifurcating sub-arcs on its boundary do not intersect the closure of any other hyperbolic component. Numerical evidence suggests an abundance of invisible Tricorn-type components in real slices of bicritical rational maps. In this paper, we study two different families of real bicritical maps and characterize invisible Tricorn-type components in terms of suitable topological properties in the dynamical planes of the representative maps. We use this criterion to prove the existence of infinitely many invisible Tricorn-type components in the corresponding parameter spaces. Although we write the proofs for two specific families, our methods apply to generic families of real bicritical maps.