Multivalued Analytic Continuation of the Cauchy Transform

In this paper we introduce the notion of multivalued analytic continuation of the Cauchy transforms. Many difficulties arise because the continuation is not single-valued. Our main result asserts that if χ_Ω has a multivalued analytic continuation, then the free boundary ∂Ω has zero Lebesgue measure. Here χ_Ω is the characteristic function of a domain Ω and ∂Ω is its boundary. We also discuss the connections between this notion, quadrature domains and approximations of analytic functions with single-valued integrals by rational functions. The last problem is related to the existence of a continuous function g and a closed connected set K such that the gradient of g vanishes on K, nevertheless g is not constant on K. Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000) Primary 31A25, 31B20; secondary 30E10, 35J05, 41A20.