On realizing measured foliations via quadratic differentials of harmonic maps toR-trees

We give a brief, elementary and analytic proof of the theorem of Hubbard and Masur [HM] (see also [K], [G]) that every class of measured foliations on a compact Riemann surfaceR of genusg can be uniquely represented by the vertical measured foliation of a holomorphic quadratic differential onR. The theorem of Thurston [Th] that the space of classes of projective measured foliations is a 6g—7 dimensional sphere follows immediately by Riemann-Roch. Our argument involves relating each representative of a class of measured foliations to an equivariant map from to anR-tree, and then finding an energy minimizing such map by the direct method in the calculus of variations. The normalized Hopf differential of this harmonic map is then the desired differential. Partially supported by NSF grant DMS9300001; Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.     

Totally geodesic foliations close to Riemannian foliations

The relation of the curvature and topology of totally geodesic foliations close to Riemannian ones is studied. The main result complements Ferus's famous theorem on totally geodesic foliations.Translated from Ukrainskii Geometricheskii Sbornik, No. 35, pp. 114–118, 1992.     

Metric foliations and curvature

We prove a rigidity theorem for Riemannian fibrations of flat spaces over compact bases and give a metric classification of compact four-dimensional manifolds of nonnegative curvature that admit totally geodesic Riemannian foliations.     

Commuting foliations

The aim of this paper is to extend the notion of commutativity of vector fields to the category of singular foliations using Nambu structures, i.e., integrable multi-vector fields. We will classify the relationship between singular foliations and Nambu structures and show some basic results about commuting Nambu structures.     

Seshadri-exceptional foliations

 The maximal Seshadri number μ(L) of an ample line bundle L on a smooth projective variety X measures the local positivity of the line bundle L at a general point of X. By refining the method of Ein-Küchle-Lazarsfeld, lower bounds on μ(L) are obtained in terms of L ⁿ , n=dim(X), for a class of varieties. The main idea is to show that if a certain lower bound is violated, there exists a non-trivial foliation on the variety whose leaves are covered by special curves. In a number of examples, one can show that such foliations must be trivial and obtain lower bounds for μ(L). The examples include the hyperplane line bundle on a smooth surface in ℙ³ and ample line bundles on smooth threefolds of Picard number 1. Received: 29 June 2001 / Published online: 16 October 2002 RID="⋆" ID="⋆" Supported by Grant No. 98-0701-01-5-L from the KOSEF. RID="⋆⋆" ID="⋆⋆" Supported by Grant No. KRF-2001-041-D00025 from the KRF.     

Diophantine approximations and foliations

In this paper we indicate the proof of an effective version of the Green-Griffiths conjecture for surfaces of general type and positive second Segre class (i.e.c ₁ ² >c ₂). Naturally this effective version is stronger than the Green-Griffiths conjecture itself.     

Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck and torsion for foliations

In this article we prove a Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck theorem for the characteristic classes of a flat vector bundle over a foliation whose graph is Hausdorff. We assume that the strong foliation Novikov-Shubin invariants of the flat bundle are greater than three times the codimension of the foliation. Using transgression, we define a torsion form which in the odd acyclic case determines a Haefliger cohomology class which only depends on the foliation and the flat bundle. We construct examples where this torsion class is highly non-trivial.