Exhaustion functions and Stein neighborhoods for smooth pseudoconvex domains

Abstract

A strictly plurisubharmonic exhaustion function with negative values is constructed for arbitrary relatively compact pseudoconvex domains with smooth boundary in a Stein manifold. It is applied to verify the Serre conjecture in a special case. A sufficient condition is given that guarantees the existence of a neighborhood-basis of Stein domains for certain bounded pseudoconvex domains on a Stein manifold.