Properties of the Ahlfors function

Abstract: Extremal problems in analysis have been studied for more than a hundred years. The so called Ahlfors function is the solution to one such problem. In this thesis, we shall study several properties of this function in a most general domain. We will consider the Ahlfors function in the context of analytic capacity, and also relate it to Riemann maps of simply connected domains onto the unit disk. Our methods involve Gelfand representation of commutative Banach algebras and standard techniques from complex analysis.