A biholomorphism of the unit disk to itself. Every such map has the form with . These maps normalize an extremal univalent function in the proof of the Riemann mapping theorem.
Koebe function 2026-10-05
The Koebe function is a univalent function from the unit disc onto . To see the image, maps the disc onto the right half-plane and . Its normalization , proves sharpness of the Koebe quarter theorem.
Koebe quarter theorem 2026-10-05
If is a univalent function on the unit disc, then . The constant is sharp, as shown by the Koebe function. This gives useful comparisons between the derivative of a conformal map, its conformal radius, and its distance to the domain boundary.
Fix . We prove the Riemann mapping theorem in this case by maximizing a normalized derivative. Choose . Since is a simply connected domain and never vanishes, it has a holomorphic square root . This is injective, and is disjoint from : equality up to sign would first force the original points to coincide. Choose and with . The ball is omitted, so is a bounded univalent function. Scaling and composing with an automorphism of the unit disk produces an injective holomorphic function with and .
Let be the family of all such normalized univalent functions. A Cauchy estimate in a small disk about bounds their derivatives, so is finite and positive. Choose a maximizing sequence in this normal family. Montel theorem gives a subsequence converging uniformly on compact subsets to . Its derivative at is . The maximum modulus principle puts its image in , and Hurwitz's theorem implies that a nonconstant limit of injective holomorphic functions is injective. Thus the maximum is attained.
If is omitted, then . Put . A holomorphic square root of exists, is injective, and takes values in . Compose with and a rotation to normalize it. Writing , the new derivative has magnitude
a contradiction. Therefore maps onto . The Cayley transform between the half-plane and disk now gives
Its inverse is holomorphic by the holomorphic inverse function theorem, so this is a biholomorphism. The proper-subset hypothesis was used to choose ; the whole complex plane cannot be mapped this way, by Liouville theorem.
The Koebe quarter theorem says that if is a univalent function with and , then
Equivalently, an arbitrary univalent function on the unit disc has . The constant cannot be increased: the Koebe function omits the ray .
Assume the domains are proper, so and are finite and positive, and interpret the conformal transformation as a bijection. Apply the Koebe quarter theorem to
The open ball lies in , so is a normalized univalent function. Its image inclusion shows that . Therefore , or .
Apply the same argument to the inverse conformal map, whose derivative at is . It gives . Thus the boundary-distance derivative bound for a conformal bijection is
The full domains need not be simply connected domains: only the two interior discs are used. If the whole plane is allowed as a domain, a conformal bijection onto another plane domain is affine and both domains are the whole plane. For example, and make both boundary distances infinite and the printed ratios undefined. This is a necessary proper-domain convention. Bijectivity also matters: the injective conformal map from the unit disc into itself has at zero but . Thus an interpretation allowing a map into, rather than onto, the second domain makes the lower bound false.
Set for . The singularity is removable, with . Injectivity of the conformal map makes away from zero, and conformality makes as well. Since the disc is simply connected, has a holomorphic logarithm. Therefore is a harmonic function, including at zero, and .
The mean value property for harmonic functions gives, for every ,
For general , boundary values mean radial limits, rather than a continuous extension of to every point of the circle. The boundary logarithmic mean of a univalent function justifies taking : the Koebe distortion theorem bounds below by , while the standard integral-mean bound for a univalent function, for , gives uniform integrability of its positive logarithm. Radial limits exist almost everywhere, and passage to the integral follows. Thus, writing for arc length on the unit circle,
The expression on the left is the logarithm of the conformal radius of at .