Real-analytic coordinates for smooth strictly pseudoconvex CR-structures (Q6042857)

This article studies the question of whether a strictly pseudoconvex smooth hypersurface \(M\) in some complex manifold \(X\) is diffeomorphic to a real analytic CR manifold. The authors refer to this property as being ``analytically regularizable'', since it makes a number of additional analytical tools available. The article presents examples that show that the question is non-trivial. The main result of the article is that a property called ``Condition E'' by the authors is equivalent to analytic regularizability. Condition E amounts to a condition on holomorphic extendability of a smooth function that can be explicitly described. This starts from a local defining function for \(M\), which is formally complexified in order to define formal Segre varieties at a point \(p\in M\). Passing to jets, one obtains (local) embeddings of \(M\) into spaces of jets of hypersurfaces in \(X\). For the one-jets, the resulting embedding realizes \(M\) as a totally real submanifold and the embedding into \(2\)-jets can be viewed as being defined on this submanifold. Condition E says that this function is locally holomorphically extendable to the pseudoconvex side. In coordinates, this can be equivalently characterized as extendability of functions obtained from determinants of iterated partial derivatives of the defining function which are similar to the ones giving rise to the Monge-Ampère equation. Necessity and sufficiency of Condition E are proved separately, via an associated system of differential equations, respectively via a careful study of a certain foliation of the jet bundle.