A Brody hyperbolic manifold is a complex manifold
for which every entire curve
is constant. For compact
, this condition is equivalent to nondegeneracy of the
Kobayashi pseudodistance, which is constructed from chains of holomorphic disks.
For example, a compact Riemann surface of genus
at least 2 is Brody hyperbolic. Its universal cover
is the unit disk, so an entire
curve lifts to a bounded entire function and
is constant by Liouville's theorem.
The compactness condition in the equivalence is essential. The condition is also distinct from a Kähler form becoming the exterior derivative of a bounded 1-form on the universal cover. The canonical-ampleness conjecture concerns Brody hyperbolicity together with compactness and a Kähler structure.