A non-strictly pseudoconvex domain for which the squeezing function tends to 1 towards the boundary (Q1799049)

Let \(\Omega\) be a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{C}^{n}\). The squeezing function \(S_{\Omega}(z)\) is defined as follows. For \(z\in\Omega\), let \(f_{z}\) be an imbedding of \(\Omega\) into the unit ball \(\mathbb{B}^{n}\) with \(f_{z}(z)= 0\). Set \(S_{\Omega,f_{z}}(z) = \sup\{r>0:B_{r}(0)\subset f_{z}(\Omega)\}\). The squeezing function is \(S_{\Omega}(z) := \sup_{f_{z}}\{S_{\Omega,f_{z}}(z)\}\). \(S_{\Omega}(z)\) encodes much geometric/analytic information about \(\Omega\): for example, when \(S_{\Omega}\) is bounded away from zero, the domain must be pseudoconvex, and Kobayashi, Carathéodory, Bergman, and the Kähler-Einstein metrics are complete. Also, it is known [\textit{K. Diederich} et al., J. Geom. Anal. 24, No. 4, 2124--2134 (2014; Zbl 1312.32006)] that when the domain is strictly pseudoconvex, then \(\lim_{z\rightarrow b\Omega}S_{\Omega}(z) = 1\). The authors asked the following natural question: Suppose \(\Omega \subset\mathbb{C}^d\) is a bounded pseudoconvex domain with \(C^k\) boundary for some \(k>2\). If \(\lim_{z\rightarrow b\Omega} S_{\Omega}(z)=1\), is \(\Omega\) strongly pseudoconvex? Recently \textit{A. Zimmer} [Math. Ann. 374, No. 3--4, 1811--1844 (2019; Zbl 1435.32013)] showed that the answer is ``yes'' if the domain is convex and has \(C^{2,\alpha}\) boundary (\(\alpha > 0\)) (actually, a stronger statement is proved). In the paper under review, the authors show that the differentiability assumption on the boundary is sharp: there exists a bounded convex \(C^2\) smooth domain which is not strongly pseudoconvex, yet whose squeezing function satisfies \(\lim_{z\rightarrow b\Omega} S_{\Omega}(z) = 1\). The construction is elementary, but clever. The paper concludes with a list of interesting open problems.