TITLE: Characterizing holomorphic functions in  $L^2(\Bbb C^n)$
QUESTION [8 upvotes]: One of my homework problems this week is to "characterize all holomorphic functions in $L^2(\Bbb C^n)$". I'm sorry for not being able to provide much work on my progress, but that is because I really don't know where to begin. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

REPLY [5 votes]: This question is a little old, but for some reason it was bumped to the front page and I thought I'd provide another answer, demonstrating the applicability of some basic techniques from the theory of distributions. The conclusion obtained by Davide is a corollary to the slightly stronger statement that the polynomials are the only holomorphic functions on $\mathbb{C}^n$ which are also tempered distributions. The argument is based on the fact that a holomorphic function $f$ is necessarily a solution to an elliptic PDE, namely $\Delta f = 0$, and the benefit of this approach lies in the fact that it generalizes easily to any solution $f$ of an equation $Lf = 0$, where $L$ is an elliptic differential operator. Denote by $\mathscr{S}$ the Schwartz space in $\mathbb{C}^n \cong \mathbb{R}^{2n}$, and by $\mathscr{S}'$ the space of tempered distributions.
For the proof, let $f$ be a holomorphic function on $\mathbb C^n$ which also lies in $\mathscr{S}'$. One can express the Laplacian $\Delta$ as
$$
\Delta = 4\sum_{j = 1}^n\partial_{z_j}\partial_{\bar{z}_j}, \tag{1}
$$
where the differential operators $\partial_{z_j}$ and $\partial_{\bar{z}_j}$ are defined by
$$
\partial_{z_j} = \frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial x_j} + i\frac{\partial}{\partial y_j}\right) \quad \text{and} \quad \partial_{\bar{z}_j} = \frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\partial}{\partial x_j} - i\frac{\partial}{\partial y_j}\right).
$$
By assumption $\partial_{\bar{z}_j}f = 0$ for $1 \leq j \leq n$, so we see by $(1)$ that $\Delta f = 0$ as well.
Because $f\in \mathscr{S}'$, we can apply the Fourier transform to the equation $\Delta f = 0$, finding that
$$
c |z|^2\hat{f} = \widehat{\Delta f} = 0 \tag{2}
$$
as tempered distributions; here $c$ is a nonzero constant which depends on the particular normalization of the Fourier transform used, and $|z|^2\hat{f}$ is the distribution defined for $\varphi \in \mathscr{S}$ by $|z|^2\hat{f}(\varphi) = \hat{f}(|z|^2\varphi)$. It follows at once from $(2)$ that $\hat{f}$ is supported at the origin: If $\varphi \in \mathscr{S}$ is supported on the open set $A_r = \{z:|z| > r\}$ for some $r > 0$, then $|z|^{-2}\varphi(z) \in \mathscr{S}$, so
$$
\hat{f}(\varphi) = |z|^2\hat{f}(|z|^{-2}\varphi) = 0.
$$
Taking the union of the sets $A_r$, we see that $\hat{f}$ is supported at the origin as claimed. Any distribution supported at the origin can be represented as a linear combination of the $\delta$-function and its derivatives (there is a bit of work hiding in this statement), so in particular we can find a positive integer $N$ and constants $c_\alpha$ such that
$$
\hat{f} = \sum_{|\alpha| \leq N} c_\alpha \partial_x^\alpha \delta.
$$
Now by applying the inverse Fourier transform we see that $f$ is a polynomial. If $p < \infty$, the only polynomial in $L^p(\mathbb{C}^n)$ is the zero polynomial, and the only polynomials in $L^\infty(\mathbb{C}^n)$ are constants, so we get the same result as Davide.