Stein surfaces as open subsets of C^2
arXiv:math/0501509
Abstract
An open subset U of a complex surface can be topologically perturbed to yield an open subset whose inherited complex structure is Stein, if and only if U is homeomorphic to the interior of a handlebody whose handles all have index equal or less than 2.
Comments 23 pages, 5 figures, AMS-LaTeX v2: Overcompressed figures fixed. v3: Minor edits - this is the published version