Some results on the entire function sharing problem

Our main result is as follows: let f and a be two entire functions such that \(\max \{ \rho _2 (f),\rho _2 (a)\} < \tfrac{1} {2}\) . If f and f ^(k) a CM, and if ρ(a ^(k) ? a) < ρ(f ? a), then f ^(k) ? a = c(f ? a) for some nonzero constant c. This result is applied to improve a result of Gundersen and Yang.