Characterizations of hyperbolically convex regions (Q2567290)

A subset \(\Omega\) of the Riemann sphere whose complement has cardinality at least three admits the unit disk \(\mathbb D\) as universal covering space, and it is called hyperbolic. It carries a metric \(\lambda_{\Omega}(w)| dw|\) which comes from the metric \(\lambda_{{\mathbb D}}(z)| dz|\) on \(\mathbb D\) that is invariant under the covering transformations. The metric \(\lambda_{\Omega}(w)| dw|\) has constant curvature \(-4\) and it is called the hyperbolic metric on \(\Omega\). The function \(\lambda_{\Omega}\) is real-analytic and it is called the hyperbolic density of the hyperbolic metric on \(\Omega\). Now let \(X\) be a simply connected hyperbolic subset of the complex plane \(\mathbb C\). A proper subset \(\Omega\) of \(X\) is called hyperbolically convex in \(X\) if for any two points \(A\) and \(B\) in \(\Omega\), the geodesic arc (for the hyperbolic metric on \(X\)) joining \(A\) and \(B\) is contained in \(\Omega\). In this paper, the authors establish several characterizations of hyperbolically convex regions \(\Omega\) in \(X\) in terms of the ratio of the hyperbolic metric \(\lambda_{\Omega}(w)| dw| \) of \(\Omega\) to the hyperbolic metric \(\lambda_{X}(w)| dw| \) of \(X\). This study uses of the natural differential operators \(\partial_X\), \(\partial^2_X\) and \(\Delta_X\) on \(X\), which they call the hyperbolic differential operators. The results obtained are analogous in their form to some known characterizations of Euclidean or spherical convex regions. Meanwhile, the authors define the notion of hyperbolic concavity relative to \(X\) for real-valued functions on \(\Omega\) and they use this notion in their description of sufficient conditions for hyperbolic convexity.