Synthetic projective geometry and Poincaré's theorem on automorphisms of the ball (Q1911497)

The author shows how the methods of Desarguesian projective geometry provide an elementary proof of the Chern-Ji theorem. He considers the ``Segre family'' of \(\partial B_n\) \((B_n\) the \(n\)-ball) \[ {\mathcal M}_{B_n} = \left\{(z,w) \in\mathbb{C}^n \times \mathbb{C}^n: \sum^n_{j=1} z_jw_j = 1 \right\}, \] and shows that if \((z_0,w_0) \in {\mathcal M}_{B_n}\) and if \(f,g\) are nondegenerate holomorphic maps from neighbourhoods \(U\), \(V\) of \(z_0\), \(w_0\), respectively, into \(\mathbb{C}^n\) such that \(f\times g\) maps \({\mathcal M}_{B_n} \cap (U \times V)\) into \({\mathcal M}_{B_n}\), then both \(f\) and \(g\) are restrictions of elements of the Möbius group. Since Shiffman's methods are ``synthetic'', the author uses only linear algebra and point-set topology. In fact he shows that the Chern-Ji theorem extends to the case of continuous \(f,g\). The method is based on the principle that a continuous local self-map of the real or complex projective space is projective-linear or anti-projective-linear (in the complex case) if it maps each line in a sufficiently large family \({\mathcal L}_0\) of lines into a line.