The core of the Levi distribution (Q6158351)

The authors present a geometrical invariant for pseudoconvex CR manifolds of hypersurface type. Namely to the Levi distribution, i.e., the complex distribution consisting of null vectors of its Levi form, one can associate its derived distribution, roughly speaking the vectors which are also tangent to its support, this operation can be iterated yielding a decreasing sequence of complex distributions that eventually stabilizes to a complex distribution named the Levi core. In this work it is shown that when the CR manifold is the boundary of a smooth pseudoconvex domain of \(\mathbb{C}^n\), this invariant is related to two other global invariants, namely the Diederich-Fornæss index and the D'Angelo class. This work builds on and expands recent results of \textit{B.Liu} [Adv. Math. 353, 776--801 (2019; Zbl 1429.32046)] and \textit{M. Adachi} and \textit{J. Yum} [J. Geom. Anal. 31, No. 8,9 8385--8413 (2021; Zbl 1481.32016)].