On the third gap for proper holomorphic maps between balls (Q2439286)

The paper under review deals with rigidity of proper rational maps between balls. The main result is the following `gap rigidity' theorem: Theorem. Let \(F\) be a proper rational map form \(\mathbb{B}^{n}\) to \(\mathbb{B}^{N}\) with \(n > 7\) and \(3n+1 \leq N \leq 4n-7\). Then there is an automorphism \(\tau \in \mathrm{Aut}(\mathbb{B}^{N})\) such that \(\tau\circ F = (G, 0^{\prime}) = (G, 0, \dots, 0)\), where \(G\) is a proper holomorphic rational map from \(\mathbb{B}^{n}\) into \(\mathbb{B}^{3n}\). In other words, as the dimension of the target increases form \((3n + 1)\) to \((4n - 7)\), there are no new proper rational maps, modulo automorphisms of the target. The authors give examples to show that the theorem is sharp with respect to these dimensions. The interval \([3n + 1, 4n - 7]\) is referred to as a gap. There are two analogous gaps known from previous work, namely \(I_{1} = [n+1, 2n-2]\) and \(I_{2} = [2n+1, 3n-4]\). Denote the gap established in this paper by \(I_{3} = [3n + 1, 4n - 7]\). Define the integer \(K(n)\) to be the largest positive integer such that \(K(n) \left( K(n) + 1\right) /2 < n\). Then these results support the following intriguing conjecture put forth by the authors. Conjecture. Let \(n \geq 3\) be a positive integer, and let \[ I_{k} = \bigg[kn + 1, (k + 1)n - \frac{k(k+1)}{2} - 1\bigg],\quad 1 \leq k \leq K(n). \] Then any proper holomorphic rational map \(F\) form \(\mathbb{B}^{n}\) into \(\mathbb{B}^{N}\) is equivalent to a map of the form \((G, 0^{\prime})\) if and only if \(N \in I_{k}\) for some \(1 \leq k \leq K(n)\).