A question of Gol’dberg concerning entire functions with prescribed zeros

Let (z_j) be a sequence of complex numbers satisfying |z_j|→ ∞ asj → ∞ and denote by n(r) the number of z_j satisfying |z_j|≤ r. Suppose that lim inf_{r → ⇈} log n(r)/ logr > 0. Let ϕ be a positive, non-decreasing function satisfying ∫^∞ (ϕ(t)t logt)⁻¹ dt < ∞. It is proved that there exists an entire functionf whose zeros are the z_j such that log log M(r,f) = o((log n(r))²ϕ(log n(r))) asr → ∞ outside some exceptional set of finite logarithmic measure, and that the integral condition on ϕ is best possible here. These results answer a question by A. A. Gol’dberg.