Loewner Theory in annulus II: Loewner chains

Abstract

Loewner Theory, based on dynamical viewpoint, proved itself to be a powerful tool in Complex Analysis and its applications. Recently Bracci et al [Bracci et al, to appear in J. Reine Angew. Math. Available on ArXiv 0807.1594; Bracci et al, Math. Ann. 344(2009), 947--962; Contreras et al, Revista Matematica Iberoamericana 26(2010), 975--1012] have proposed a new approach bringing together all the variants of the (deterministic) Loewner Evolution in a simply connected reference domain. This paper is devoted to the construction of a general version of Loewner Theory for the annulus launched in [ArXiv 1011.4253]. We introduce the general notion of a Loewner chain over a system of annuli and obtain a 1-to-1 correspondence between Loewner chains and evolution families in the doubly connected setting similar to that in the Loewner Theory for the unit disk. Futhermore, we establish a conformal classification of Loewner chains via the corresponding evolution families and via semicomplete weak holomorphic vector fields. Finally, we extend the explicit characterization of the semicomplete weak holomorphic vector fields obtained in [ArXiv 1011.4253] to the general case.