On the Steinness index

Abstract: We introduce the concept of Steinness index related to the Stein neighborhood basis. We then show several results: (1) The existence of Steinness index is equivalent to that of strong Stein neighborhood basis. (2) On the Diederich-Forn{\ae}ss worm domains in particular, we present an explicit formula relating the Steinness index to the well-known Diederich-Forn{\ae}ss index. (3) The Steinness index is 1 if a smoothly bounded pseudoconvex domain admits finitely many boundary points of infinite type.