Compactness of Hankel operators and analytic discs in the boundary of pseudoconvex domains (Q1024569)

Let \(\beta\) be a function smooth up to the boundary on a smooth bounded pseudoconvex domain \(\Omega\subset\mathbb C^n\) for \(n\geq 2\) and \(\beta\in C^{\infty}(\overline{\Omega})\). The authors prove that, if \(\Omega\) is convex or the Levi form of the boundary of \(\Omega\) is of rank at least \(n-2\), then the compactness of the Hankel operator \(H_\beta \) implies that \(\beta \) is holomorphic ``along'' analytic discs in the boundary. Furthermore, when \(\Omega \) is convex in \(\mathbb C^2\), the converse is also true. That is, if \(\Omega \) is convex in \(\mathbb C^2\), then the Hankel operator \(H_\beta \) is compact if and only if \(\beta \) is holomorphic ``along'' analytic discs in the boundary.