HOLOMORPHIC FAMILIES OF NONEQUIVALENT EMBEDDINGS AND OF HOLOMORPHIC GROUP ACTIONS ON AFFINE SPACE

We construct holomorphic families of proper holomorphic embeddings of C-k into C-n (0 < k < n - 1), so that for any two different parameters in the family, no holomorphic automorphism of C-n can map the image of the corresponding two embeddings onto each other. As an application to the study of the group of holomorphic automorphisms of C-n, we derive the existence of families of holomorphic C*-actions on C-n (n >= 5) so that different actions in the family are not conjugate. This result is surprising in view of the long-standing holomorphic linearization problem, which, in particular, asked whether there would be more than one conjugacy class of C*-actions on C-n (with prescribed linear part at a fixed point).