The Eremenko-Lyubich constant

Eremenko and Lyubich proved that an entire function whose set of singular values is bounded is expanding at points where its image has large modulus. These expansion properties have been at the centre of the subsequent study of this class of functions, now called the Eremenko-Lyubich class. We improve the estimate of Eremenko and Lyubich, and show that the new estimate is asymptotically optimal. As a corollary, we obtain an elementary proof that functions in the Eremenko-Lyubich class have lower order at least $1\mathrm{/}2$.