Stein extensions of real symmetric spaces and the geometry of the flag manifold

 Let G be a connected semisimple Lie group contained in its simply connected complexification G _C . Let KG∩K _C be a maximal compact subgroup of G. Denote by X _o the unique closed G-orbit in the full flag manifold ℱ and by 𝒪 the unique open K _C -orbit in ℱ. The set consisting of the elements gK _C so that gX _o ⊂𝒪 is an Stein extension of G/K⊂G _C /K _C . There is a universal domain , natural form the point of view of group actions which has been conjectured to be Stein. The main result of this paper is the inclusion . In the second part of the paper I show, under some dominance condition in the parameter, that representations in Dolbeault cohomology can be realized as holomorphic sections of vector bundles over . Received: 9 September 2002 / Revised version: 12 July 2002 / Published online: 8 April 2003 Mathematics Subject Classification (2002): 22E30 Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-9801605 and DMS 0074991.