Rigidity of proper holomorphic maps between bounded symmetric domains (Q2354344)

The authors prove a Poincaré-Alexander type rigidity result for CR mappings between open pieces of boundary components of bounded symmetric domains of type \(I_{pq}\). More precisely, Theorem 2 states that a smooth CR map \(f\) from a boundary component \(S_{p,q,r}\) of rank \(r<q\) of a symmetric domain of type \(I_{pq}\) into a boundary component \(S_{p',q',r'}\) of a symmetric domain of type \(I_{p',q'}\), after composing with suitable automorphisms in source and target, takes block form \(f(z)=\mathrm{diag} [ z, I_{r'-r}, h(z) ]\), where \(I_{r'-r}\) is the \((r'-r)\times (r'-r)\) identity matrix and \(h(z)\) is any CR mapping satisfying \(I-h^* h >> 0\). It is assumed that \(r<q\), \(q,q'>1\), \(p'-r'<(2p-r)\), \(q'-r'<p-r\) and that the following boundary regularity condition is satisfied: \(df (\xi)\) is transversal to the complex tangent space at \(S_{p',q',r'}\) whenever \(\xi\) is transversal to the complex tangent space at \(S_{p,q,r}\). From this result the authors obtain a rigidity theorem for holomorphic maps of some neighbourhoods of boundary points of symmetric domains of type I, which in turn implies that a proper holomorphic map \(f: D_{p,q} \to D_{p',q'}\) (\(p\geq q>1\)), which extends smoothly to a neighbourhood of a smooth boundary point has, after composing with suitable automorphisms in source and target, holomorphic matrix form (with trivial block \(I_{r'-r}\)) as in Theorem 2, if \(p'<2p-1\) and \(q'<p\). This answers a question by Mok affirmatively.