Presence or absence of analytic structure in maximal ideal spaces

Preprint, 2014

We study extensions of Wermer's maximality theorem to several complex variables. We exhibit various smoothly embedded manifolds in complex Euclidean space whose hulls are non-trivial but contain no analytic disks. We answer a question posed by Lee Stout concerning the existence of analytic structure for a uniform algebra whose maximal ideal space is a manifold.