Stably tame automorphisms (Q583283)

It is well-known that all automorphisms of the polynomial ring \(k[x_ 1,...,x_ n]\) over a field k are tame if \(n=2\), whereas for \(n\geq 3\) the problem is still open. For a special case, namely the Bass-Nagata automorphism \(\sigma\in Aut(k[x,y,z])\) given by \[ \sigma (x)=x-2wy-w^ 2z,\quad \sigma (y)=y+wz,\quad \sigma (z)=z, \] w being \(xz+y^ 2\), the author shows its stably tameness. More generally it is proved that for D being a locally nilpotent derivation of \(K[x_ 1,...,x_ n]\) and \(w\in \ker (D)\), exp(wD) is stably tame if D is conjugate by a tame automorphism to a triangular derivation.