Properties of normal harmonic mappings (Q2006790)

Let \(\mathbb{D}\) denote the open unit disk in the complex plane and let \(\rho\) denote the hyperbolic distance on \(\mathbb{D}\). A harmonic mapping \(f:\mathbb{D}\to \mathbb{C}\) is said to be normal if \(f\) is Lipschitz as mapping from the hyperbolic disk to the extended plane endowed with the chordal distance \(\chi\), that is, \(\sup_{z\not=w} \chi(f(z), f(w))/\rho(z,w)<\infty\). The condition turns out to be equivalent to \[ \alpha:=\sup_{z \in \mathbb{D}} (1-|z|)^2 f^\#(z)<\infty, \] where \(f^\#=(|h'|+|g'|)/(1+|f|^2)\) if \(f=h+\overline{g}\) with \(f, g\) holomorphic in \(\mathbb{D}\), and in the case of meromorphic functions \(f\) equivalent to the normality of the family \(\{f \circ \varphi: \varphi \in\mathrm{Aut}(\mathbb{D})\}\). In this paper the authors present necessary, sufficient and also necessary and sufficient conditions for a harmonic \(f\) to be normal, and they discuss a maximum principle in terms of \(\alpha\). Moreover, they show that the existence of an asymptotic value at a point \(\xi\in \partial \mathbb{D}\) already implies the existence of the non-tangential limit at \(\xi\) and they investigate sequences of normal harmonic functions. Finally, a five-point theorem for sense-preserving harmonic functions is proven.