A Stein manifold topologically but not holomorphically equivalent to a domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ n\) (Q1073976)

In this paper the authors give a negative answer to the following question: If M is an n-dimensional Stein manifold topologically or differentiably equivalent to a domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ n\), is M holomorphically equivalent to a domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ n ?\) (This is the n-dimensional analogue of a problem which was positively solved by the general uniformization theorem of Koebe.) Namely, the authors show that the 7-dimensional submanifold \(\Sigma^ 7\) of \({\mathbb{C}}^ 8\) \((\Sigma^ 7=\{(z_ 1...z_ 8)\in {\mathbb{C}}^ 8| \quad \sum^{8}_{i=1}z^ 2_ i=1\})\) is real analytically equivalent to a domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ 7\) but not holomorphically equivalent to a domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ 7\). No neighbourhood of \(S^ 7\) \((:=\Sigma^ 7\cap {\mathbb{R}}^ 8)\) in \(\Sigma^ 7\) is holomorphically equivalent to a domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ 7\).