A Galois-dynamics correspondence for unicritical polynomials

Abstract

In an analogy with the Galois homothety property for torsion points of abelian varieties that was used in the proof of the Mordell-Lang conjecture, we describe a correspondence between the action of a Galois group and the dynamical action of a rational map. For nonlinear polynomials with rational coefficients, the irreducibility of the associated dynatomic polynomial serves as a convenient criterion, although we also verify that the correspondence occurs in several cases when the dynatomic polynomial is reducible. The work of Morton, Morton-Patel, and Vivaldi-Hatjispyros in the early 1990s connected the irreducibility and Galois-theoretic properties of dynatomic polynomials to rational periodic points; from the Galois-dynamics correspondence, we derive similar consequences for quadratic periodic points of unicritical polynomials. This is sufficient to deduce the non-existence of quadratic periodic points of quadratic polynomials with exact period 5 and 6, outside of a specified finite set from Morton and Krumm's work in explicit Hilbert irreducibility.

13 pages