math.CV — Complex Variables
Contributed by Dave Goel
We prove that Smale's mean value constant exceeds 1.1559837, improving the bound 1.1018 of Jatar and Ng; after the first version of this paper, the author proved that it equals 4. Smale proved in 1981 that for every complex polynomial P of degree at least 2 and every point z with P′(z)=0, some critical point ζ of P satisfies ∣P(z)−P(ζ)∣≤K∣z−ζ∣∣P′(z)∣ with K=4, and he conjectured that K=1 suffices; K∗ is the best constant, called Smale's mean value constant. That conjecture was disproved in 2026. Jatar and Ng showed that K∗ equals the supremum of 1/B(0) over the admissible pairs (W,B): W is a normalised univalent map of the unit disk, B is a finite Blaschke product with B(0)>0, and the derivative of the product WB has no zero in the disk. We construct such a pair explicitly, with B of degree two, from a polynomial of degree 18 with Gaussian rational coefficients, and we verify the required properties by a computation in exact arithmetic. Writing Bd for this supremum restricted to degB≤d, we prove, partly with certified computation, that 1.1363375<B1<1.177801, B2<100/61, and Bd≤4−0.00597/(dlogd) for every d≥2, which improves the bound of Jatar and Ng for d≥452. If a pair attains Bd with d≥1, then W does not extend holomorphically to any neighbourhood of the closed disk and is not rational. If 1/Bn(0)→4 along a sequence of admissible pairs (Wn,Bn) (such sequences exist, since K∗=4), then after rotation Wn tends to the Koebe function, as Jatar and Ng observed, and the zeros a of Bn, weighted by log(1/∣a∣), have an explicit limit distribution. Every admissible pair (W,B) with W meromorphic on a neighbourhood of the closed disk has degB≤wt(W), a weighted count of the points of the circle where ∣W∣ is stationary and argW decreases.
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