Singular Riemannian foliations on simply connected spaces

A singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold is said to be Riemannian if each geodesic that is perpendicular at one point to a leaf remains perpendicular to every leaf it meets. The singular foliation is said to admit sections if each regular point is contained in a totally geodesic complete immersed submanifold that meets every leaf orthogonally and whose dimension is the codimension of the regular leaves. A typical example of such a singular foliation is the partition by orbits of a polar action, e.g. the orbits of the adjoint action of a compact Lie group on itself.We prove that a singular Riemannian foliation with compact leaves that admits sections on a simply connected space has no exceptional leaves, i.e., each regular leaf has trivial normal holonomy. We also prove that there exists a convex fundamental domain in each section of the foliation and in particular that the space of leaves is a convex Coxeter orbifold.     

Equifocality of a singular Riemannian foliation

A singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold is said to be Riemannian if each geodesic that is perpendicular to a leaf at one point remains perpendicular to every leaf it meets. We prove that the regular leaves are equifocal, i.e., the end point map of a normal foliated vector field has constant rank. This implies that we can reconstruct the singular foliation by taking all parallel submanifolds of a regular leaf with trivial holonomy. In addition, the end point map of a normal foliated vector field on a leaf with trivial holonomy is a covering map. These results generalize previous results of the authors on singular Riemannian foliations with sections.

     

Leaf closures of Riemannian foliations: A survey on topological and geometric aspects of Killing foliations

A smooth foliation is Riemannian when its leaves are locally equidistant. The closures of the leaves of a Riemannian foliation on a simply-connected manifold, or more generally of a Killing foliation, are described by flows of transverse Killing vector fields. This offers significant technical advantages in the study of this class of foliations, which nonetheless includes other important classes, such as those given by the orbits of isometric Lie group actions. Aiming at a broad audience, in this survey we introduce Killing foliations from the very basics, starting with a brief revision of the main objects appearing in this theory, such as pseudogroups, sheaves, holonomy and basic cohomology. We then review Molino’s structural theory for Riemannian foliations and present its transverse counterpart in the theory of complete pseudogroups of isometries, emphasizing the connections between these topics. We also survey some classical results and recent developments in the theory of Killing foliations. Finally, we review some topics in the theory of singular Riemannian foliations, including the recent proof of Molino’s conjecture, and discuss singular Killing foliations.     

Lagrangians adapted to submersions and foliations

Lagrangians related to submersions and foliations, which are analogous to Riemannian submersions and Riemannian foliations respectively are studied in the paper. One prove that a bundle-like Lagrangian, a transverse hyperregular Lagrangian, a hyperregular Lagrangian foliated cocycle or a geodesic orthogonal property are equivalent data for a foliation. A conjecture of E. Ghys is proved in a more general setting than that of Finslerian foliations: a foliation that has a transverse positively definite Lagrangian is a Riemannian foliation. One extend also a result of Miernowski and Mozgawa on Finslerian foliations, proving that the natural lift to the normal bundle of a Lagrangian foliation that has a transverse positively definite Lagrangian is a Riemannian foliation.     

Instability for harmonic foliations on compact homogeneous spaces

In this paper we discuss the instability of harmonic foliations on compact submanifolds immersed in Euclidean spaces and compact homogeneous spaces. We obtain a sufficient condition for a harmonic foliation to be unstable on compact submanifolds in a Euclidean space and on compact isotropy irreducible homogeneous spaces. We also classify compact symmetric spaces which have no non-trivial stable harmonic foliation.     

Tangential category of foliations

We present techniques to construct tangential homotopies of subsets of foliated manifolds and use these to obtain bounds and explicit computations for the tangential Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of foliations. For example, we show that this number is not greater than the dimension of the foliation, that it is an upper semi-continuous function on the space of p-dimensional foliations of a given manifold, and that it is equal to the dimension of the foliation for all codimension 1 foliations without holonomy on compact nilmanifolds.     

The geometry of a bi-Lagrangian manifold

This is a survey on bi-Lagrangian manifolds, which are symplectic manifolds endowed with two transversal Lagrangian foliations. We also study the non-integrable case (i.e., a symplectic manifold endowed with two transversal Lagrangian distributions). We show that many different geometric structures can be attached to these manifolds and we carefully analyze the associated connections. Moreover, we introduce the problem of the intersection of the two leaves, one of each foliation, through a point and show a lot of significative examples.     

A Global Stability Theorem for Transversely Holomorphic Foliations

We prove a global stability theorem for transversely holomorphic foliations of complex codimension one: if there exists a compact leaf with finite holonomy, then the foliation is a Seifert fibration (that is, every leaf is compact and has finite holonomy).     

Lift of the Finsler foliation to its normal bundle

E. Ghys in [E. Ghys, Appendix E: Riemannian foliations: Examples and problems, in: P. Molino (Ed.), Riemannian Foliations, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1988, pp. 297-314. [3]] has posed a question (still unsolved) if any Finslerian foliation is a Riemannian one? In this paper we prove that the natural lift of a Finslerian foliation to its normal bundle is a Riemannian foliation for some Riemannian transversal metric. The methods we used here are closely related to those used by M. Abate and G. Patrizio in [M. Abate, G. Patrizio, Finsler Metrics—A Global Approach, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1994].     

Dynamical properties of the space of Lorentzian metrics

We study the mechanisms of the non properness of the action of the group of diffeomorphisms on the space of Lorentzian metrics of a compact manifold. In particular, we prove that nonproperness entails the presence of lightlike geodesic foliations of codimension 1. On the 2-torus, we prove that a metric with constant curvature along one of its lightlike foliation is actually flat. This allows us to show that the restriction of the action to the set of non-flat metrics is proper and that on the set of flat metrics of volume 1 the action is ergodic. Finally, we show that, contrarily to the Riemannian case, the space of metrics without isometries is not always open.     

On codimension one foliations with prescribed cuspidal separatrix

In this paper, we will construct a pre-normal form for germs of codimension one holomorphic foliation having a particular type of separatrix, of cuspidal type. As an application, we will explain how this form could be used in order to study the analytic classification of the singularities via the projective holonomy, in the generalized surface case. We will also give an application to the analytic classification of singularities, and a sufficient condition, in the quasi-homogeneous, three-dimensional case, for these foliations to be of generalized surface type.     

Local structure of Koszul-Vinberg and of Lie algebroids

In this short note we continue our study of Koszul-Vinberg algebroids which form a subcategory of the category of Lie algebroids, and which appear naturally in the study of affine structures, affine and transversally affine foliations [N. Nguiffo Boyom, R. Wolak, J. Geom. Phys. 42 (2002) 307-317]. We prove a local decomposition theorem for KV-algebroids. Using the notion of KV-algebroids we introduce a new class of singular foliations: affine singular foliations. In the last section we study the holonomy of these foliations and prove a stability theorem.     

The first cohomology group of leaves and local stability of compact foliations

A foliation with all leaves compact (compact foliation) is called locally stable if every leaf has a basis of neighborhoods which are unions of leaves. We study the relationship between the first real cohomology group of leaves and the local stability of compact foliations. We show by example that the topology of the typical leaves (i.e. leaves with zero holonomy) has no influence on the local stability of the foliation while — at least for small codimensions — (less than 4 in general or less than 5 for foliations on compact minifolds) — a locally unstable foliation has a leaf F with infinite holonomy and a finite covering F' of F such that H¹(F'; IR) O. We also prove a related structural stability result for fibre bundles.     

Proofs of Conjectures about Singular Riemannian Foliations

A singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold M is said to be Riemannian if each geodesic that is perpendicular at one point to a leaf remains perpendicular to every leaf it meets. We prove that if the distribution of normal spaces to the regular leaves is integrable, then each leaf of this normal distribution can be extended to be a complete immersed totally geodesic submanifold (called section), which meets every leaf orthogonally. In addition the set of regular points is open and dense in each section. This result generalizes a result of Boualem and solves a problem inspired by a remark of Palais and Terng and a work of Szenthe about polar actions. We also study the singular holonomy of a singular Riemannian foliation with sections (s.r.f.s. for short) and in particular the tranverse orbit of the closure of each leaf. Furthermore we prove that the closures of the leaves of a s.r.f.s on M form a partition of M which is a singular Riemannian foliation. This result proves partially a conjecture of Molino.     

Integrable Riemannian Submersion with Singularities

A map of a Riemannian manifold into an euclidian space is said to be transnormal if its restrictions to neighbourhoods of regular level sets are integrable Riemannian submersions. Analytic transnormal maps can be used to describe isoparametric submanifolds in spaces of constant curvature and equifocal submanifolds with flat sections in simply connected symmetric spaces. These submanifolds are also regular leaves of singular Riemannian foliations with sections. We prove that regular level sets of an analytic transnormal map on a real analytic complete Riemannian manifold are equifocal submanifolds and leaves of a singular Riemannian foliation with sections.     

Smoothness of holonomy covers for singular foliations and essential isotropy

Given a singular foliation, we attach an “essential isotropy” group to each of its leaves, and show that its discreteness is the integrability obstruction of a natural Lie algebroid over the leaf. We show that a condition ensuring discreteness is the local surjectivity of a transversal exponential map associated with the maximal ideal of vector fields prescribed to be tangent to the foliation. The essential isotropy group is also shown to control the smoothness of the holonomy cover of the leaf (the associated fiber of the holonomy groupoid), as well as the smoothness of the associated isotropy group. Namely, the (topological) closeness of the essential isotropy group is a necessary and sufficient condition for the holonomy cover to be a smooth (finite-dimensional) manifold and the isotropy group to be a Lie group. These results are useful towards understanding the normal form of a singular foliation around a compact leaf. At the end of this article we briefly outline work of ours on this normal form, to be presented in a subsequent paper.     

Longitudinal smoothness of the holonomy groupoid

Iakovos Androulidakis and Georges Skandalis have defined a holonomy groupoid for any singular foliation. This groupoid, whose topology is usually quite bad, is the starting point for the study of longitudinal pseudodifferential calculus on such foliation and its associated index theory. These studies can be highly simplified under the assumption of the holonomy groupoid being longitudinally smooth. In this note, we rephrase the period bounding lemma that asserts that a vector field on a compact manifold admits a strictly positive lower bound for its periodic orbits in order to prove that the holonomy groupoid is always longitudinally smooth.     

The Noether–Fano inequalities for codimension one singular holomorphic foliations

The idea of the proof of the classical Noether–Fano inequalities can be adapted to the domain of codimension one singular holomorphic foliations of the projective space. We obtained criteria for proving that the degree of a foliation on the plane is minimal in the birational class of the foliation and for the non-existence of birational symmetries of generic foliations (except automorphisms). Moreover, we give several examples of birational symmetries of special foliations illustrating our results.