Estimates of the Carathéodory metric on the symmetrized polydisc (Q2474922)

For \(n\geq 1\) and \(1 \leq k \leq n\) let \[ \sigma_{n,k} (z):=\sum_{1\leq j_1 <\dots<j_k\leq n} z_{j_1}\cdot \dots \cdot z_{j_k} \] and \(\sigma_n: \mathbb C^n \rightarrow\mathbb C^n \) the mapping \[ \sigma (z) :=( \sigma_{n,1}(z),\dots, \sigma_{n,n}(z) \,) \] The symmetrized \(n\)-disc \(G_n\) is defined by \(G_n= \sigma_n(D_n)\), where \(D_n\) denotes the unit polydisc in \(\mathbb C^n\). For \(j=1,\dots,n-1\), \(\lambda \in\mathbb C, | \lambda| \leq 1\), and \(n\geq 2\) let the \(\mathbb C^{n-1}\)-valued rational map \(p_{n,\lambda}\) be defined by \[ p_{n,\lambda} (z):= \left( \frac{(n-j)z_j+(j+1)\lambda z_{j+1}}{n+\lambda z_1}\right)_{j=1}^{n-1}, \quad z \in\mathbb C^n \setminus \{ n+\lambda z_1 =0\} \] For \((\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_{n-1}) \in \overline{D_n}\) we introduce the rational function \( f_{\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_{n-1}} := p_{2,\lambda_1} \circ\cdots\circ p_{n,\lambda_{n-1}}\) . This induces the distance function \[ p_{G_n} (z,w):= \max_{\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_{n-1} \in T_n} p_{D_1} (f_{\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_{n-1}}(z), f_{\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_{n-1}}(w)) \] where \(p_{D_1}\) is the Poincaré distance in the unit disc. One always has \(p_{G_n}\leq c_{G_n}\), where \(c_{G_n}\) is the Carathéodory distance of \(G_n\). The authors prove that \(p_{G_n}(0,\cdot)\neq c_{G_n}(0, \cdot)\) for \(n>2\), which improves a known result, which says that \(p_{G_n}\) does not agree with the Kobayashi distance. They further give an asymptotic formula for the infinitesimal Carathéodory metric \(\gamma_{G_{2n+1}}\) at \((0, e_2)\) (where \(e_2\) is the second standard unit vector in \(\mathbb C^n\)). With this result the authors obtain that on \(G_3\) the Carathéodory distance does not coincide with the Kobayashi distance.