A sufficient condition for subellipticity of the \(\bar {\partial}\)-Neumann operator (Q859654)

The author generalises Catlin's subellipticity results on smooth pseudoconvex domains. Here Catlin's condition is substituted by a condition on the selfboundedness of the gradient of some plurisubharmonic functions. This definition is mainly due to J. McNeal. The objective was to give sharper estimates in various geometric situations. The main result is: Let \(\Omega\Subset\mathbb{C}^n\) be a smoothly bounded domain. Let \(p\) be a given point in \(b\Omega\) and suppose that \(b\Omega\cap U\) is pseudoconvex, where \(U\) is a neighborhood of \(p\). Denote by \(S_\delta\) the set \(\{z\in\Omega\mid-\delta< r(z)< 0\}\), where \(r\) is a fixed, smooth defining function of \(\Omega\). Assume that for all \(\delta> 0\) sufficiently small there exists a plurisubharmonic function \(\phi_\delta\in{\mathcal C}^2(\overline\Omega\cap U)\) such that: (1) \(|\partial\phi_\delta|_{i\partial\overline\partial\phi_\delta}\leq C\), where the constant \(C\) is independent of \(\delta\); (ii) for all smooth \((p,q)\)-forms \(u,z\in S_\delta\cap U\) and for some \(s\in(0,{1\over 2}]\) \[ \sum_{|I|= p,|J|= q-1}\;\sum^n_{k,l=1} {\partial^2\phi_\delta\over \partial z_k\partial\overline z_l}(z) u_{I,kJ}\overline u_{I,lJ}\geq c\delta^{-2\varepsilon}|u|^2, \] where the constant \(c> 0\) does not depend on \(\delta\) or \(u\). Then there exists a neighborhood \(V\Subset U\) of \(p\) such that a subelliptic estimate of order \(\varepsilon\) holds. In the proof a duality argument of McNeal has been applied. Furthermore, the author gives an interesting example how the family of plurisubharmonic functions \(\{\phi_\delta\}\) can be constructed.