In complex analysis, de Branges's theorem, or the Bieberbach conjecture, is a theorem that gives a necessary condition on a holomorphic function in order for it to map the open unit disk of the complex plane injectively to the complex plane. It was posed by Ludwig Bieberbach (1916) and finally proven by Louis de Branges (1985).

The statement concerns the Taylor coefficients of a univalent function, i.e. a one-to-one holomorphic function that maps the unit disk into the complex plane, normalized as is always possible so that and . That is, we consider a function defined on the open unit disk which is holomorphic and injective (univalent) with Taylor series of the form

Such functions are called schlicht. The theorem then states that

The Koebe function (see below) is a function for which for all , and it is schlicht, so we cannot find a stricter limit on the absolute value of the th coefficient.

Schlicht functions

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The normalizations

 

mean that

 

This can always be obtained by an affine transformation: starting with an arbitrary injective holomorphic function   defined on the open unit disk and setting

 

Such functions   are of interest because they appear in the Riemann mapping theorem.

A schlicht function is defined as an analytic function   that is one-to-one and satisfies   and  . A family of schlicht functions are the rotated Koebe functions

 

with   a complex number of absolute value  . If   is a schlicht function and   for some  , then   is a rotated Koebe function.

The condition of de Branges' theorem is not sufficient to show the function is schlicht, as the function

 

shows: it is holomorphic on the unit disc and satisfies   for all  , but it is not injective since  .

History

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A survey of the history is given by Koepf (2007).

Bieberbach (1916) proved  , and stated the conjecture that  . Löwner (1917) and Nevanlinna (1921) independently proved the conjecture for starlike functions. Then Charles Loewner (Löwner (1923)) proved  , using the Löwner equation. His work was used by most later attempts, and is also applied in the theory of Schramm–Loewner evolution.

Littlewood (1925, theorem 20) proved that   for all  , showing that the Bieberbach conjecture is true up to a factor of   Several authors later reduced the constant in the inequality below  .

If   is a schlicht function then   is an odd schlicht function. Paley and Littlewood (1932) showed that its Taylor coefficients satisfy   for all  . They conjectured that   can be replaced by   as a natural generalization of the Bieberbach conjecture. The Littlewood–Paley conjecture easily implies the Bieberbach conjecture using the Cauchy inequality, but it was soon disproved by Fekete & Szegő (1933), who showed there is an odd schlicht function with  , and that this is the maximum possible value of  . Isaak Milin later showed that   can be replaced by  , and Hayman showed that the numbers   have a limit less than   if   is not a Koebe function (for which the   are all  ). So the limit is always less than or equal to  , meaning that Littlewood and Paley's conjecture is true for all but a finite number of coefficients. A weaker form of Littlewood and Paley's conjecture was found by Robertson (1936).

The Robertson conjecture states that if

 

is an odd schlicht function in the unit disk with   then for all positive integers  ,

 

Robertson observed that his conjecture is still strong enough to imply the Bieberbach conjecture, and proved it for  . This conjecture introduced the key idea of bounding various quadratic functions of the coefficients rather than the coefficients themselves, which is equivalent to bounding norms of elements in certain Hilbert spaces of schlicht functions.

There were several proofs of the Bieberbach conjecture for certain higher values of  , in particular Garabedian & Schiffer (1955) proved  , Ozawa (1969) and Pederson (1968) proved  , and Pederson & Schiffer (1972) proved  .

Hayman (1955) proved that the limit of   exists, and has absolute value less than   unless   is a Koebe function. In particular this showed that for any   there can be at most a finite number of exceptions to the Bieberbach conjecture.

The Milin conjecture states that for each schlicht function on the unit disk, and for all positive integers  ,

 

where the logarithmic coefficients   of   are given by

 

Milin (1977) showed using the Lebedev–Milin inequality that the Milin conjecture (later proved by de Branges) implies the Robertson conjecture and therefore the Bieberbach conjecture.

Finally de Branges (1987) proved   for all  .

De Branges's proof

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The proof uses a type of Hilbert space of entire functions. The study of these spaces grew into a sub-field of complex analysis and the spaces have come to be called de Branges spaces. De Branges proved the stronger Milin conjecture (Milin 1977) on logarithmic coefficients. This was already known to imply the Robertson conjecture (Robertson 1936) about odd univalent functions, which in turn was known to imply the Bieberbach conjecture about schlicht functions (Bieberbach 1916). His proof uses the Loewner equation, the Askey–Gasper inequality about Jacobi polynomials, and the Lebedev–Milin inequality on exponentiated power series.

De Branges reduced the conjecture to some inequalities for Jacobi polynomials, and verified the first few by hand. Walter Gautschi verified more of these inequalities by computer for de Branges (proving the Bieberbach conjecture for the first 30 or so coefficients) and then asked Richard Askey whether he knew of any similar inequalities. Askey pointed out that Askey & Gasper (1976) had proved the necessary inequalities eight years before, which allowed de Branges to complete his proof. The first version was very long and had some minor mistakes which caused some skepticism about it, but these were corrected with the help of members of the Leningrad seminar on Geometric Function Theory (Leningrad Department of Steklov Mathematical Institute) when de Branges visited in 1984.

De Branges proved the following result, which for   implies the Milin conjecture (and therefore the Bieberbach conjecture). Suppose that   and   are real numbers for positive integers   with limit   and such that

 

is non-negative, non-increasing, and has limit  . Then for all Riemann mapping functions   univalent in the unit disk with

 

the maximum value of

 

is achieved by the Koebe function  .

A simplified version of the proof was published in 1985 by Carl FitzGerald and Christian Pommerenke (FitzGerald & Pommerenke (1985)), and an even shorter description by Jacob Korevaar (Korevaar (1986)).

See also

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References

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Further reading

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  • Liu, Xiaosong; Liu, Taishun; Xu, Qinghua (2015). "A proof of a weak version of the Bieberbach conjecture in several complex variables". Science China Mathematics. 58 (12): 2531–2540. doi:10.1007/s11425-015-5016-2. S2CID 122080390.