Deformations of Stein structures and extensions of holomorphic mappings (Q2459321)

In the context of extension theorems for holomorphic functions on Stein manifolds, the authors prove the following result: Let \(X\) be a Stein manifold with \(\dim_ {\mathbb{C} } X \neq 2\) and let \(A\) be a closed complex subvariety of \(X\). Given a continuous map \(f: X \to Y\) to a complex manifold \(Y\) such that \(f| _{A} : A \to Y\) is holomorphic, there is a homotopy \((J_{t}, f_{t})_{t \in [0,1]}\) consisting of integrable complex structures \(J_{t}\) on \(X\) satisfying the following properties: (i) \(J_{0}\) is the initial complex structure on \(X\), \( J_{t} =J_{0}\) in a neighborhood of \(A\) for each \(t \in [0,1]\) and \(J_{1}\) is a Stein structure on \(X\); (ii) \( f_{0} = f\) , \( f_{t}| _{A} = f| _{A}\) for every \(t \in [0,1]\) , and \(f_{1}: X \to Y\) is \(J_{1}\)-holomorphic. A section of the paper is dedicated to the 2-dimensional case, where the following result is proven: Let \(X\) be a Stein surface and let \(A\) be a closed complex subvariety of \(X\). Given a continuous map \(f : X \to Y\) to a complex manifold \(Y\) such that \(f| _{A} : A \to Y\) is holomorphic, there exist a Stein domain \( \Omega \subset X \) containing \(A\), a holomorphic map \(\tilde{f}: \Omega \to Y\), and an orientation preserving homeomorphism \(h: X \to \Omega\) which is homeotopic to \(id_{X}\) by a homeotopy that is fixed on a neighborhood of \(A\), such that the map \(\tilde{f} \circ h :X \to Y\) is homotopic to \(f\) relative to \(A\).