Aberrant CR structures (Q1058021)

The authors consider a \(C^{\infty}\) manifold of dimension \(2n+1\) with abstract CR structure having non-degenerate Levi form with one eigenvalue of sign opposite that common to the other n eigenvalues. For any fixed point p, the authors construct, near p, a new CR structure which equals the old to infinite order at p, but for which the only CR functions of class \(C^ 1\) are constant. Thus the new CR structure is as far as possible from being locally integrable at p. Such a structure is said to be an aberrant CR structure. Using this pointwise result and a Baire's category argument, the authors show that any linear basis for a CR structure satisfying the above signature condition, can be uniformly approximated on compact sets by aberrant CR structures.