American Journal of Mathematics

abstract:

On a bounded strictly pseudoconvex domain in $\Bbb{C}^n$, $n>1$, the smoothness of the Cheng-Yau solution to Fefferman's complex Monge-Ampere equation up to the boundary is obstructed by a local curvature invariant of the boundary. For bounded strictly pseudoconvex domains in $\Bbb{C}^2$ which are diffeomorphic to the ball, we motivate and consider the problem of determining whether the global vanishing of this obstruction implies biholomorphic equivalence to the unit ball. In particular we observe that, up to biholomorphism, the unit ball in $\Bbb{C}^2$ is rigid with respect to deformations in the class of strictly pseudoconvex domains with obstruction flat boundary. We further show that for more general deformations of the unit ball, the order of vanishing of the obstruction equals the order of vanishing of the CR curvature. Finally, we give a generalization of the recent result of the second author that for an abstract CR manifold with transverse symmetry, obstruction flatness implies local equivalence to the CR $3$-sphere.