What lies between polynomial and exponential growth?

Abstract

In this paper we give an alternative exposition of a recent paper regarding the classification of growth rates of real functions. We take a different point of view, focussing on understanding possible growth rates between polynomial and exponential. In order to be able to explicitly name a range of such functions, we first need to extend our basic functions. We do this via a 'tower' of Abel functions. With these one can classify functions in a natural way with polynomials and exponentials in consecutive classes. We show there are large gaps between these classes which indicate that it is mostly unknown what lies between polynomial and exponential growth, especially if the "Continuum Hypothesis for classes" is true.