On the maximum principle and a notion of plurisubharmonicity for abstract CR manifolds (Q2460987)

Let \(M\) be an abstract CR manifold, i.e., a manifold endowed with an involutive subbundle \(\mathcal V \subset T^{\mathbb C} M\) so that \(\mathcal V_x \cap \overline{\mathcal V}_x = \{0\}\) for any \(x \in M\). Recall that \(M\) is called embeddable if there exists an embedding \(\imath: M \to \mathbb C^N\) which maps \(\mathcal V\) into the subbundle of \(T^{\mathbb C}(\imath(M))\), spanned by the holomorphic vector fields in \(\mathbb C^N\) that are tangent to \(\imath(M)\). Let us call it set of strict Levi definiteness the subset \(\Sigma \subset M\) of points \(x \in M\) where the Levi form of \((M, \mathcal V)\) is strictly definite, i.e., where the Levi map \(\mathcal L_x: \mathcal V_x \times \mathcal V_x \to T^{\mathbb C}_x M/(\mathcal V_x \cup \overline{ \mathcal V_x})\) defined by \[ \mathcal L_x(v, w) = \frac{1}{2 i} [X^{(v)}, \overline{X^{(w)}}]_x/(\mathcal V_x \cup \overline{ \mathcal V_x})\text{ for some }X^{(v)}, X^{(w)} \in \mathcal V\text{ with } X^{(v)}_x = v\;, X^{(w)}_x = v, \] is so that \(\mathcal L_x(v, v) \neq 0\) for any \(v \in \mathcal V_x\). Moreover a \(\mathcal C^2\) function \(g\) on \(M\) is called \({\mathcal V}\)-convex if for any \(x \in M\) and any \(X \in \mathcal C^\infty(M, \mathcal V)\) with \(X_x \neq 0\) \[ \Re(X(\overline X(g))- ([X, \overline X])^{0,1}(g))| _x > 0 \] where we denoted by \((\cdot)^{0,1}\) the projection onto \(\overline{\mathcal V}\). Generalizing a result by N. Siboni, the authors prove the following maximum principle on abstract CR manifolds: Let \((M, \mathcal V)\) be an abstract CR manifold, which admits a real valued \(\mathcal C^2\) function \(g\) that is \(\mathcal V\)-convex and let \(\Omega \subseteq M\) be a relatively compact open subset of \(M\). For any CR function \(f \in \mathcal C^2(\Omega) \cap \mathcal C(\overline \Omega)\) and for any \(z \in \Omega\) \[ | f(z)| \leq \max_{\partial \Omega \cup \overline{\Sigma \cap \Omega}} | f| \] where we denote by \(\Sigma \) the set of strict Levi definiteness of \(M\). The existence of a \(\mathcal V\)-convex function \(g\) is guaranteed on any embedded CR manifold. On the other hand, the authors provide: (i) examples of locally embeddable CR manifolds, but not globally embeddable, for which there is no \(\mathcal V\)-convex function and the maximum principle of the main theorem does not hold; (ii)examples of not locally embeddable CR manifolds with a \(\mathcal V\)-convex function \(g\) and for which the above maximum principle holds.