Invariant distances and metrics in complex analysis (Q5919904)

This is the second edition of the significant monograph ``Invariant distances and metrics in complex analysis''. Its first edition appeared in 1993 and was quickly recognized not only by experts but also by all who were interested in studying invariant pseudodistances and pseudometrics. This new extended version is a comprehensive and beautifully-written book and covers more than twice the material in the old one. Although the book considers only domains in \(\mathbb C^n\) (with a small number of exceptions), a huge and continuous progress in the field of invariant objects, as well as the limited number of pages, forced the authors to make a careful selection of the material they would like to present in the monograph. Nevertheless, the book is as complete as possible and it will be not only a valuable reference work for experts but also may become an inspiration for all the readers with basic knowledge of several complex variables to do research in the area covered by the book. The ``List of problems'' appendix, which gathers the open problems from all chapters, will be very helpful for them. The authors have tried to keep as much as possible of the old book untouched. Therefore, the reader will find here a detailed discussion of the Carathéodory and the Kobayashi pseudodistances and their corresponding infinitesimal versions, i.e.~the Carathéodory-Reiffen and the Kobayashi-Royden pseudometrics. Next, the general contractible system from an abstract point of view as well as the non-standard contractible systems (such as the Hahn and the Wu pseudometrics) are studied. Similar as in the previous version, there is an overview over complex geodesics and the Lempert theorem, the Bergman metric, hyperbolicity and completeness with respect to the invariant functions, the product property, and comparison on pseudoconvex domains. Completely new are the chapters on invariant functions on elementary Reinhardt domains, the symmetrized polydisc (a domain of great interest in the context of the famous Lempert theorem), and the analytic disc method invented in the eighties by E.~A.~Poletsky, which is one of the important tools of modern complex analysis. The authors have been highly successful in achieving the main goal of the book, which was, according to their own words, ``to present a systematic study of invariant pseudodistances and their infinitesimal counterparts''. Moreover, they were able to do that combining great precision of reasoning with highest level of readability.