Differential Inequalities and Univalent Functions

Abstract

Let $\mathcal{M}$ be the class of analytic functions in the unit disk $\ID$ with the normalization $f(0)=f^{\prime }(0)-1=0$, and satisfying the condition $$\left |z^2\left (\frac{z}{f(z)}\right )''+ f'(z)\left(\frac{z}{f(z)} \right)^{2}-1\right |\leq 1, \quad z\in \ID. $$ Functions in $\mathcal{M}$ are known to be univalent in $\ID$. In this paper, it is shown that the harmonic mean of two functions in $\mathcal{M}$ are closed, that is, it belongs again to $\mathcal{M}$. This result also holds for other related classes of normalized univalent functions. A number of new examples of functions in $\mathcal{M}$ are shown to be starlike in $\ID$. However we conjecture that functions in $\mathcal{M}$ are not necessarily starlike, as apparently supported by other examples.

10 pages; To appear in Lobachevskii Journal of Mathematics