STUDIES OF DIFFERENCES FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF NEVANLINNA THEORY

This paper consists of three parts. First, we give so far the best condition under which the shift invariance of the counting function, and of the characteristic of a subharmonic function, holds. Second, a difference analogue of logarithmic derivative of a delta-subharmonic function is established allowing the case of hyper-order equal to one and minimal hyper-type, which improves the condition of the hyper-order less than one. Finally, we make a careful discussion of a well-known difference equation and give the possible forms of the equation under a growth condition for the solutions.