Non-embeddable CR-manifolds and surface singularities (Q1207421)

The author studies 3-dimensional CR-manifolds \(M\), in particular the question of (local) embeddability into some \(\mathbb{C}^ N\). It is known from Nirenberg and later Jacobowitz and Treves that \(M\) might not be locally embeddable and that, in some sense, the non-embeddable structures on \(M\) are dense in the space of all CR-structures on \(M\). The purpose of the paper is to give constructions of such locally nonembeddable structures which arise quite naturally from the neighbourhood boundary of a smoothable normal (complex) surface singularity. (The Definition 3.1 of smoothability is not quite correct in the general case, although sufficient for hypersurface singularitities; but this is irrelevant for the paper). Consider a good representative of a 1-parameter smoothing of an isolated surface singularity with simply connected Milnor fibre. Since the links of the fibres (including the central one) form a trivial differentiable fibre bundle, this defines a family of CR-structures on the link of the singularity by pulling back the natural CR-structures on the links of the Milnor fibres to the link of the central fibre. Taking the quotient hypersurface singularities \(A_ k\), \(D_ k\), \(E_ 6\), \(E_ 7\), \(E_ 8\) one obtains for each finite subgroup \(G\) of \(SU(2)\) a family of \(G\)-invariant CR-structures on \(S^ 3\) which are deformation of the standard one. Deforming and pasting those CR-structures coming from \(A_ k\) for different \(k\) in a certain way gives rise to locally non-embeddable CR-structures.