No label defined (Q4249508)

The problem of whether or not a hypo-elliptic operator (i.e. \(C^\infty\) hypo-elliptic) with analytic coefficients is also analytic hypo-elliptic is old and very difficult. Many authors have contributed to the subject and even though it became clear that the symplectic nature of the characteristic manifold had some relation with the hypo-ellipticity of the operator, counterexamples have been around ever since. In this paper the author states an interesting conjecture on the hypo-ellipticity of a certain kind of differential operators, i.e. the sums of squares of vector fields with analytic coefficients. This conjecture relates the analytic hypo-ellipticity with the symplectic character of the (Poisson) strata of a semi-analytic stratification of the characteristic variety. The conjecture is stated in a very general framework for the sums of squares and is ``tested'' against a number of examples well known in the literature. To the reviewer's knowledge this conjecture is still unproved. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0905.00061].