A Kobayashi pseudo-distance for holomorphic bracket generating distributions

Abstract

In this paper, we generalize the Kobayashi pseudo-distance to complex manifolds which admit holomorphic bracket generating distributions. The generalization is based on Chow's theorem in sub-Riemannian geometry. Let G be a linear semisimple Lie group. For a complex $G$-homogeneous manifold M with a G-invariant holomorphic bracket generating distribution D, we prove that (M,D) is Kobayashi hyperbolic if and only if the universal covering of M is a canonical flag domain and the induced distribution is the superhorizontal distribution.