Compactification of complete Kähler surfaces of finite volume satisfying certain curvature conditions (Q1120034)

This article is an essential contribution to the solution of the compactification problem of a complete Kähler surface X with finite volume and negative Ricci curvature: If the sectional curvature of X is seminegative and bounded, then X is biholomorphic to a Zariski-open subset of a projective-algebraic surface. The author proves this theorem by showing first that the field of meromorphic functions on X is an algebraic function field of transcendence degree two, thus getting a ``bimeromorphic'' map of X into a projective algebraic variety. Then he desingularizes and modifies this map to get an open holomorphic embedding of X into a projective algebraic surface and to ensure that \(M\setminus X\) is a complex analytic subvariety of M. Meanwhile the author and \textit{J.-Q. Zhong} proved the following generalization of the above result (to be published in Ann. Math. 130 (1989)): Let X be a complete Kähler manifold of finite volume with negative Ricci curvature and bounded sectional curvature. If the even Betti numbers \(b_{2p}(X)\) are all finite or if dim X\(=2\), then X is biholomorphic to a Zariski-open subset of a projective-algebraic variety.