Higher order symmetries of real hypersurfaces in $\Bbb C^3.$

Abstract

We study nonlinear automorphisms of Levi degenerate hypersurfaces of finite multitype. By recent results of Kolar, Meylan and Zaitsev, the Lie algebra of infinitesimal CR automorphisms may contain a graded component consisting of nonlinear vector fields of arbitrarily high degree, which has no analog in the classical Levi nondegenerate case, or in the case of finite type hypersurfaces in $\mathbb C^2$. We analyze this phenomenon for hypersurfaces of finite Catlin multitype in complex dimension three. The results provide a complete classification of such manifolds. As a consequence, we show on which hypersurfaces 2-jets are not sufficient to determine an automorphism. The results also confirm a conjecture about the origin of nonlinear automorphisms of Levi degenerate hypersurfaces, formulated by the first author (AIM 2010).