Sunday, 14 October 2012

cv.complex variables - Level set of a harmonic function

Let $u$ be a nonconstant real-valued harmonic function defined in the open unit disk $D$. Suppose that $Gammasubset D$ is a smooth connected curve such that $u=0$ on $Gamma$. Is there a universal upper bound for the length of $Gamma$?



Remark: by the Hayman-Wu theorem, the answer is yes if $u$ is the real part of an injective holomorphic function; in fact, in this case there is a universal upper bound for the length of the entire level set in $D$. For general harmonic functions, level sets can have arbitrarily large length, e.g. $Re z^n$.

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