Complete complex hypersurfaces in the ball come in foliations (Q2152777)

The author proves that for any closed complex hypersurface \(V\) in the unit ball \(\mathbb B^n\) of a complex Euclidean space \(\mathbb C^n\) there is a holomorphic function \(f\colon \mathbb B^n\to \mathbb C\) such that \(V=f^{-1}(0)\) and for every \(c\in f(\mathbb B^n)\setminus\{0\}\) the level set \(f^{-1}(c)\) is complete. In addition, if \(V\) is smooth, then \(f\) can be chosen noncritical. A similar result is obtained for complex submanifolds of higher codimension and holomorphic submersions. The question of the existence of complete bounded complex submanifolds in a complex Euclidean space \(\mathbb C^n\) was raised by \textit{P. Yang} [J. Differ. Geom. 12, 499--511 (1977; Zbl 0409.53043)], and affirmatively answered by \textit{P. W. Jones} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 76, 305--306 (1979; Zbl 0418.32006)] for the unit disc. \textit{J. Globevnik} [Ann. Math. (2) 182, No. 3, 1067--1091 (2015; Zbl 1333.32018)] recently proved that the open unit ball \(\mathbb B^n\) admits smooth complete closed complex submanifolds of any codimension. Many constructions of complete maps depend on labyrinths of compact sets in \(\mathbb B^n\): any proper path from \([0,1)\) avoiding the labyrinth has infinite length. In the paper, the map \(f\) and the labyrinth are constructed simultaneously in an inductive construction.