The modified Cartan conjecture

Abstract

In 1928 H. Cartan stated a conjecture about holomorphic curves in $\mathbb{P}^n$ parametrized by the unit disc, omitting $n+2$ hyperplanes in general position. He proved it for $n=2$. In 1996 the first-named author constructed counterexamples for all $n\geq 3$, and proposed a modified form of Cartan's conjecture which he proved for $n=3$. In this paper we prove this modified conjecture in all dimensions. As a byproduct we prove a quantitative version of the classical theorem that analytic functions are linearly dependent if and only if their Wronskian determinant is zero. We interpret our results in terms of the Kobayashi--Royden pseudometric on the complement of $n+2$ hyperplanes, and on smooth algebraic varieties in the algebraic torus.