Abstract. Let Z be a complex space and let S be a compact set in C n × Z which is fibered over R n . We give a necessary and sufficient condition for S to be a Stein compactum.
Fibrations over totally real setsWe denote by O(Z) the algebra of all holomorphic functions on a (reduced, paracompact) complex space Z, endowed with the compact-open topology. A compact subset K of Z is said to be a Stein compactum if K has a basis of Stein open neighborhoods.For the theory of Stein spaces we refer to [10,11].Let Z be a complex space, and consider the product C n × Z with the projection π : C n × Z → C n . Let S be a compact set in C n × Z. For every point ζ ∈ C n we let S ζ = {z ∈ Z : (ζ, z) ∈ S} denote the fiber of S over ζ. We are interested in the following:Question: Under what conditions on the projection π(S) ⊂ C n and on the fibers S ζ is S a Stein compactum in C n × Z?We give the following precise answer under the assumption that the projection π(S) is contained in R n , the real subspace of C n .
Theorem 1.1. Let S be a compact set in
and only if for every open neighborhood
The analogous result holds if π(S) belongs to a totally real submanifold of C n .A particular reason for looking at this problem is that a question of this type, for compact sets that are laminated by holomorphic leaves, appears in the recent work by the first author [8]; the relevant result is provided by Corollary 2.2 below.The following simple example (a thin version of Hartog's figure) shows that it is not enough to assume in Theorem 1.1 that each fiber of S is a Stein compactum.