Kobayashi-Royden pseudometric on contractible surfaces

Abstract

We describe a family of smooth contractible algebraic surfaces $X$ different from $\C^2$ such that $X$ admits dominant holomorphic maps from $\C^2$ and there is a unique line $E$ in $X$ for which the Kobayashi-Royden pseudometric vanishes on the tangent bundle over $X\setminus E$.

9 pages