Title: Conformal metrics in complex analysis

Speaker: David Minda, University of Cincinnati

Most of the material on which I will lecture is part of work with Alan Beardon of the
University of Cambridge to be part of a book. The overall theme of the lectures is the
role of conformal metrics in complex analysis. I plan to begin at a basic level and give
largely expository lectures.
Lecture 1: Conformal metrics and the three classical geometries. Conformal metrics
play a fundamental role in complex analysis; they are special types of Riemannian metrics
on plane regions that give angles their usual Euclidean measure. The three classical
geometries, hyperbolic, Euclidean and spherical, arise from complete conformal metrics
with curvature −1, 0 and +1. We will discuss these metrics and identify their isometry
groups which are subgroups of the group of Möbius transformations. We discuss why the
hyperbolic metric is fundamental in geometric function theory.
Lecture 2: The hyperbolic metric on simply connected regions. The hyperbolic metric on
the unit disk D can be transplanted to any simply connected region that is conformally
equivalent D by using a Riemann mapping of the region onto the unit disk. Covering
theorems for univalent functions can be recast as comparisons between the hyperbolic
metric and the quasihyperbolic metric on a simply connected region. Also, classical
growth and distortion theorems for univalent functions have analogs in terms of the
hyperbolic metric.
Lecture 3: The equivalence of conformal metrics with constant curvature and holomor-
phic (meromorphic) functions. Loosely speaking, locally injective bounded holomorphic
functions and conformal metrics with constant curvature −1 are the same. Precisely, on
a hyperbolic simply connected plane region Ω there is a homeomorphic correspondence
between the family of locally injective bounded holomorphic functions and the family of
conformal metrics with constant curvature −1. The original version of this theorem is
due to Liouville. His ‘proof’ does not meet the standards of today’s rigor, but proba-
bly could be made into a rigorous proof. We sketch a rigorous function-theoretic proof
of Liouville’s Theorem using basic notions such as the connection and Schwarzian of a
conformal metric.
Lecture 4: The hyperbolic metric on hyperbolic planar regions. By making use of the
Uniformization Theorem, the hyperbolic metric can be transported to any planar region
whose complement in the plane contains at least two points.