On regular Stein neighborhoods of a union of two totally real planes in ℂ²
We find regular Stein neighborhoods of a union of totally real planes M = (A+iI)ℝ² and N = ℝ² in ℂ², provided that the entries of a real 2 × 2 matrix A are sufficiently small. A key step in our proof is a local construction of a suitable function ρ near the origin. The sublevel sets of ρ are strongly Levi pseudoconvex and admit strong deformation retraction to M ∪ N.