Three extremal problems for hyperbolically convex functions (Q1880505)

Let \(\mathbb D=\{z: | z| <1\}\) denote the unit disk in the complex plane \(\mathbb C\) with the Poincaré metric \(\lambda(z)| dz| =2| dz| /(1-| z| ^2)\). Then hyperbolic geodesics in \(\mathbb D\) are subarcs of circles which intersect \(\partial\mathbb D\) orthogonally. A hyperbolic polygon is a simply connected subset of \(\mathbb D\), which contains the origin and which is bounded by a Jordan curve consisting of a finite collection of hyperbolic geodesics and arcs of the unit circle. The bounding geodesics are referred as proper sides. A function \(f:\mathbb D\to\mathbb D\) is called to be hyperbolically convex if \(f\) is analytic and univalent in \(\mathbb D\) and if \(f(\mathbb D)\) is hyperbolically convex, namely, for any two points \(w_1\) and \(w_2\) in \(f(\mathbb D)\), the hyperbolic geodesic connecting \(w_1\) to \(w_2\) lies entirely inside \(f(\mathbb D)\). The set of all hyperbolically convex functions \(f\) with \(f(0)=0\) and \(f'(0)>0\) is denoted by \(\mathcal H\). For \(0<\alpha<1\), let \(\mathcal H_{\alpha}\) denote the subset of \(\mathcal H\) of functions \(f\) with \(f(z)=\alpha z+a_2z^2+a_3z^3+\cdots\). The authors apply a variational method to three extremal problems for hyperbolically convex functions posed by Ma and Minda [\textit{W. Ma} and \textit{D. Minda}, Ann. Polon. Math. 60, 81-100 (1994; Zbl 0818.30010)], and Pommerenke. They first consider the problem of extremizing \(\text{Re}\,f(z)/z\) over \(\mathcal H_{\alpha}\) and show that the extremal value (maximum or minimum) can be obtained from a hyperbolically convex function \(f\) which maps \(\mathbb D\) onto a hyperbolic polygon with exactly one proper side. The result in the case of maximizing \(\text{Re}\,f(z)/z\) has been obtained previously by Ma and Minda. They also consider the problem of maximizing \(\text{Re}\,a_3\) over \(\mathcal H_{\alpha}\) or \(\mathcal H\) and show that the extremal value (in both cases) can be obtained by a hyperbolically convex function \(f\) which maps \(\mathbb D\) onto a hyperbolic polygon with at most two proper sides.