A Smooth Counterexample to the Trautman Conjecture

Abstract

The Trautman conjecture asserted that a smooth three-dimensional CR manifold admitting a nowhere-zero closed section of its canonical bundle must be locally embeddable in ${\mathbb{C}}^2$. We modify a standard construction of nonembeddable smooth strongly pseudoconvex CR 3-manifolds so that the condition of having a nowhere-zero closed section of the canonical bundle is preserved, thus providing a strongly pseudoconvex counterexample to the Trautman conjecture.

Preliminary version. Comments welcome