Hankel operators on the Bergman spaces of Reinhardt domains and foliations of analytic disks (Q777208)

From the point of view of operator theory, compactness of Hankel operators is interesting, for example, because it implies that the assignment \(\phi\mapsto T_{\phi}\) from the symbol \(\phi\) (say \(\phi\in C(\overline{\Omega})\)) to its associated Toeplitz operator \(T_{\phi}\) is an algebra homomorphism of \(C(\overline{\Omega})\) into the Calkin algebra on the Bergman space of the domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{C}^{n}\). This means, among other things, that if the symbol \(\phi\) is nonvanishing, then \(T_{\phi}\) is invertible in the Calkin algebra, that is, it is Fredholm. From the point of view of several complex variables, the interest stems from the connection with the \(\overline{\partial}\)-Neumann problem: the Hankel operator \(H_{\phi}\) on the Bergman space can be expressed as \(H_{\phi}f = \overline{\partial}^{*}N\overline{\partial}(\phi f)\). Here, \(\Omega\) is a bounded pseudoconvex domain in \(\mathbb{C}^{n}\) and \(N\) is the \(\overline{\partial}\)-Neumann operator on \((0,1)\)-forms. It is well known that, if \(N\) is compact, then so is \(H_{\phi}\) for all \(\phi\in C(\overline{\Omega})\). It is natural to ask what happens if the \(\overline{\partial}\)-Neumann operator is not compact. The paper under review makes a contribution to this circle of ideas. The main result is the following. Theorem 1. Let \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{C}^{2}\) be a bounded pseudoconvex complete Reinhardt domain with a \(C^{\infty}\)-smooth boundary. Suppose that \(\Omega\) is locally convex near \(\{(z_{1},z_{2}): z_{1}=0\}\cup\{(z_{1},z_{2}):z_{2}=0\}\). Also, suppose that there exists \(\{\Gamma_{k}\}_{k=1,\dots, l}\subset b\Omega\) so that for each \(k\in\{1,\dots, l\}\), \(\Gamma_{k}\) is a \(C^{\infty}\)-smooth family of analytic discs generated by rotations. Furthermore, \(\Gamma_{\Omega} = \cup_{k \in \{1,\dots, l\}}\Gamma_{k}\). Assume that \(\phi\in C(\overline{\Omega})\). Then \(\phi\circ f\) is holomorphic for any holomorphic \(f:\mathbb{D}\to b\Omega\) if and only if \(H_{\phi}\) is compact on \(A^{2}(\Omega)\). The ``if'' part appeared in [Integral Equations Oper. Theory 90, No. 6, Paper No. 71, 14 p. (2018; Zbl 1459.47013)]; here, the author proves the ``only if'' direction. Roughly speaking, there are four ingredients in the proof. First, on convex domains, one has good compactness estimates for the \(\overline{\partial}\)-Neumann operator away from analytic discs in the boundary. Second, Reinhardt domains are locally convexifiable away from the coordinate axes; the additional assumptions guarantee that they also are near points on the coordinate axes. Third, compactness of Hankel operators localizes suitably; essentially, one is now working on a convex domain. Fourth, and finally, the analyticity of the symbol along the analytic discs in the boundary provides the required estimates near these discs.