Convergent normal form for real hypersurfaces at generic Levi degeneracy

Abstract

We construct a complete convergent normal form for a real hypersurface in $\CC{N},\,N\geq 2$ at generic Levi degeneracy. This seems to be the first convergent normal form for a Levi-degenerate hypersurface. In particular, we obtain, in the spirit of the work of Chern and Moser \cite{chern}, distinguished curves in the Levi degeneracy set, that we call \it degenerate chains.