Geometric sufficient conditions for compactness of the complex Green operator (Q1930288)

The \(\overline \partial\)-complex on \(\mathbb{C}^n\) induces the tangential \(\overline \partial_M\)-complex on a CR-submanifold \(M\). A CR-submanifold is of hypersurface type if the complex tangent bundle has codimension one inside the real tangent bundle. In this paper, the authors study compactness of the \(\overline \partial_M\)-complex on compact pseudoconvex CR-submanifolds of hypersurface type. If the CR-dimension of \(M\) is at least two, sufficient conditions for compactness estimates for \(\overline \partial_M\) are given in terms of certain complex tangential flows. For every weakly pseudoconvex point \(P\in M\), there should exist an arbitrarily short complex tangential flow that takes \(P\), hence a neighborhood of \(P\), into the set of strictly pseudoconvex points of \(M\). The authors indicate that for CR-dimension one, the closed range property of \(\overline \partial_M\) is already needed in the proof of the compactness estimates. They also prove that for a smooth compact orientable pseudoconvex CR-submanifold of hypersurface type and of CR-dimension \((m-1)\), which contains no analytic submanifolds of dimension \((m-1)\), the operators \(\overline \partial_M: L^2_{(0,q-1)}(M) \longrightarrow L^2_{(0,q)}(M)\) have closed range, \(1\leq q \leq m\).