The Diederich-Fornæss exponent and non-existence of Stein domains with Levi-flat boundaries (Q254254)

This paper is motivated by the non-existence of Levi-flat hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^n\). The proof of such a non-existence is known for \(n>2\) and is still open for the case \(n=2\) (cf. references in the paper). Another approach in this direction is the main purpose of this paper which investigates this aspect from the view-point of the so-called Diederich-Fornaess index (D-F index) of defining functions for a bounded pseudoconvex domain \(\Omega\) with \(C^2\) boundary in a Stein manifold (cf. \S2 of the paper, for precise definitions). The main result of the authors can be stated as follows: Theorem 1.1. Let \(\Omega\subset\subset M\) be a bounded Stein domain with \(C^2\) boundary, where \(M\) is a \(\mathbb{C}\)-manifold with \(\mathbb{C}\)-dimension \(M= n\). Let \(\varrho\) be a defining function for \(\Omega\). Assume that the D-F index of \(\varrho\) is greater than \(k/n\), where \(1\leq k\leq n-1\). Then \(\Omega\) has a boundary point at which the Levi form of \(\varrho\) has rank \(>k-1\). As a consequence the authors derive the following. Corollary 1.2. Let \(\varrho\), \(\Omega\) be as in Theorem 1.1. If the D-F index of \(\varrho> 1/n\), resp. \(\varrho>1-1/n\), then its boundary cannot be Levi flat, resp. it must have at least one strongly pseudoconvex boundary point.