Higher order symmetries of real hypersurfaces in ℂ³

Abstract

We study nonlinear automorphisms of Levi degenerate hypersurfaces of finite multitype. By results of Kolar, Meylan, and Zaitsev in 2014, the Lie algebra of infinitesimal CR automorphisms may contain a graded component consisting of nonlinear vector fields of arbitrarily high degree, which has no analog in the classical Levi nondegenerate case, or in the case of finite type hypersurfaces in C 2 \mathbb C^2 . We analyze this phenomenon for hypersurfaces of finite Catlin multitype with holomorphically nondegenerate models in complex dimension three. The results provide a complete classification of such manifolds. As a consequence, we show on which hypersurfaces 2-jets are not sufficient to determine an automorphism. The results also confirm a conjecture about the origin of nonlinear automorphisms of Levi degenerate hypersurfaces, formulated by the first author for an AIM workshop in 2010.