Continuity of capacity of a holomorphic motion (Q2006080)

The authors show that, under holomorphic motions, the logarithmic capacity of compact plane sets is continuous, while analytic capacity may not. For the unit disk \(\mathbb D=\{z\in\mathbb C:|z|<1\}\) and a subset \(A\) of the Riemann sphere \(\hat{\mathbb C}\), a holomorphic motion of \(A\) is a map \(h:\mathbb D\times A\to\hat{\mathbb C}\) such that for each fixed \(z\in A\), the map \(\lambda\mapsto h(z,\lambda)\) is holomorphic on \(\mathbb D\), for each \(\lambda\in\mathbb D\), the map \(z\mapsto h(z,\lambda)\) is injective on \(A\), and \(h(0,z)=z\) for all \(z\in A\). Given a holomorphic motion \(h\) and a subset \(E\subset A\), denote \(h_{\lambda}(z):=h(\lambda,z)\) and \(E_{\lambda}:=h_{\lambda}(E)\). So \(E_0=E\). The logarithmic capacity \(c(E)\) of a compact set \(E\subset\mathbb C\) is defined by \(c(E):=\exp(-\inf_{\mu}I(\mu))\), where the infimum is taken over all Borel probability measures \(\mu\) supported on \(E\) and \[I(\mu):=\iint\log|z-w|d\mu(z)d\mu(w)\] is the logarithmic energy of \(\mu\). The first main result is given in the following theorem. Theorem 1.3. Let \(E\subset\mathbb C\) be compact and let \(h:\mathbb D\times\hat{\mathbb C}\to\hat{\mathbb C}\) be a holomorphic motion of \(\hat{\mathbb C}\) with \(h_{\lambda}(\infty)=\infty\) for all \(\lambda\in\mathbb D\). Then the function \(\lambda\mapsto c(E_{\lambda})\), \(\lambda\in\mathbb D\), is continuous. The analytic capacity \(\gamma(K)\) of a compact set \(K\subset\mathbb C\) is defined by \(\gamma(K):=\sup_g|g'(\infty)|\), where the supremum is taken over all holomorphic functions \(g:\hat{\mathbb C}\setminus K\to\mathbb D\), and \(g'(\infty)=\lim_{z\to\infty}z(g(z)-g(\infty))\). The second main result is proved in the next theorem. Theorem 1.4. There exist a compact set \(E\subset\mathbb C\) and a holomorphic motion \(h:\mathbb D\times\hat{\mathbb C}\to\hat{\mathbb C}\) such that \(h_{\lambda}(\infty)=\infty\) for all \(\lambda\in\mathbb D\), but the function \(\lambda\mapsto\gamma(E_{\lambda})\), \(\lambda\in\mathbb D\), is not continuous.