Hessian quartic forms and the Bergman metric (Q2266795)

The authors introduce and study Hessian quartic forms for an arbitrary Hermitian metric, patterned after the Hessian curvature for the Carathéodory metric on bounded domains in \({\mathbb{C}}^ n\) [see the reviewer, Rocky Mt. J. Math. 8, 555-559 (1978; Zbl 0347.32014)]. These Hessian quartic forms provide another proof of a result of \textit{H. Wu} [Indiana Univ. Math. J. 22, 1103-1108 (1973; Zbl 0265.53055)] stating that the holomorphic sectional curvature coincides with the maximum of the Gaussian curvatures to all local one-dimensional submanifolds that contact at the point in the direction under consideration. Furthermore, as another application, the authors consider the Hessian quartic form of the so called ''m-th order Bergman metric'' [see the reviewer, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 67, 50-54 (1977; Zbl 0346.32030)] and prove several distortion theorems.