Noncritical holomorphic functions on Stein spaces

We prove that every reduced Stein space admits a holomorphic function without critical points. Furthermore, any closed discrete subset of such a space is the critical locus of a holomorphic function. We also show that for every complex analytic stratification with nonsingular strata on a reduced Stein space there exists a holomorphic function whose restriction to every stratum is noncritical. These result also provide some information on critical loci of holomorphic functions on desingularizations of Stein spaces. In particular, every 1-convex manifold admits a holomorphic function that is noncritical outside the exceptional variety.Comment: To appear in J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS

Analytic cliffordian functions

In classical function theory, a function is holomorphic if and only if it is complex analytic. For higher dimensional spaces it is natural to work in the context of Clifford algebras. The structures of these algebras depend on the parity of the dimension n of the underlying vector space. The theory of holomorphic Cliffordian functions reflects this dependence. In the case of odd n the space of functions is defined by an operator (the Cauchy-Riemann equation) but not in the case of even $n$. For all dimensions the powers of identity (z^n, x^n) are the foundation of function theory