Given d ≥ 2 consider the family of polynomials $P_c\left(z\right)=z^d+c$ for c ∈ ℂ. Denote by $J_c$ the Julia set of $P_c$ and let ${ℳ}_d=c|J_{c}isconnected$ be the connectedness locus; for d = 2 it is called the Mandelbrot set. We study semihyperbolic parameters $c₀\in \partial {ℳ}_d$: those for which the critical point 0 is not recurrent by $P_{c₀}$ and without parabolic cycles. The Hausdorff dimension of $J_c$, denoted by $HD\left(J_c\right)$, does not depend continuously on c at such $c₀\in \partial {ℳ}_d$; on the other hand the function $c\mapsto HD\left(J_c\right)$ is analytic in $ℂ-{ℳ}_d$. Our first result asserts that there is still some continuity...

Let f₀(z) = z²+1/4. We denote by ₀ the set of parameters σ ∈ ℂ for which the critical point 0 escapes from the filled-in Julia set K(f₀) in one step by the Lavaurs map $g_{\sigma }$. We prove that if σ₀ ∈ ∂₀, then the Hausdorff dimension of the Julia-Lavaurs set $J_{0,\sigma }$ is continuous at σ₀ as the function of the parameter $\sigma \in \overline{₀}$ if and only if $HD\left(J_{0,\sigma ₀}\right)\ge 4/3$. Since $HD\left(J_{0,\sigma }\right)>4/3$ on a dense set of parameters which correspond to preparabolic points, the lower semicontinuity implies the continuity of $HD\left(J_{0,\sigma }\right)$ on an open and dense subset of ∂₀.