A conjecture of Burns and Knieper asks whether a 2-plane with a metric without conjugate points, and with a geodesic foliation whose lines are at bounded Hausdorff distance, is necessarily flat. We prove this conjecture in two cases: under the hypothesis that the plane admits total curvature, and under the hypothesis of visibility at some point. Along the way, we show that all geodesic line foliations on a Riemannian 2-plane must be homeomorphic to the standard one.
In this paper, we use the methods of subriemannian geometry to study the dual foliation of the singular Riemannian foliation induced by isometric Lie group actions on a complete Riemannian manifold M. We show that under some conditions, the dual foliation has only one leaf.
Singular Riemannian Foliations are particular types of foliations on Riemannian manifolds, in which leaves locally stay at a constant distance from each other. Singular Riemannian Foliations in round spheres play a special role, since they provide "infinitesimal information" about general Singular Riemannian Foliations. In this paper we show that Singular Riemannian Foliations in spheres, of dimension at most 3, are orbits of an isometric group action.
We show that a Riemannian foliation on a topological $n$-sphere has leaf dimension 1 or 3 unless n=15 and the Riemannian foliation is given by the fibers of a Riemannian submersion to an 8-dimensional sphere. This allows us to classify Riemannian foliations on round spheres up to metric congruence.
We determine the structure of the fundamental group of the regular leaves of a closed singular Riemannian foliation on a compact, simply connected Riemannian manifold. We also study closed singular Riemannian foliations whose leaves are homeomorphic to aspherical or to Bieberbach manifolds. These foliations, which we call A-foliations and B-foliations, respectively, generalize isometric torus actions on Riemannian manifolds. We apply our results to the classification problem of compact, simply connected Riemannian 4- and 5-manifolds with positive or nonnegative sectional curvature.
Using a new type of Jacobi field estimate we will prove a duality theorem for singular Riemannian foliations in complete manifolds of nonnegative sectional curvature.
In this paper we present some new results on the tautness of Riemannian foliations in their historical context. The first part of the paper gives a short history of the problem. For a closed manifold, the tautness of a Riemannian foliation can be characterized cohomologically. We extend this cohomological characterization to a class of foliations which includes the foliated strata of any singular Riemannian foliation of a closed manifold.
In this paper, we introduce an entropy functional on Riemannian foliation, inspired by the work of , which is monotonically along the transverse Ricci flow. We relate their gradient flow, via diffeomorphism preserving the foliated structure of the manifold with Riemannian foliation, to the transverse Ricci flow. Moreover, inspired by the work of Fuquan Fang and Yuhao Zhang, we give a necessary condition for codimension 4 Riemannian foliation admitting the transverse Einstein metric.
Let H be the hyperbolic space of dimension n+1. A geodesic foliation of H is given by a smooth unit vector field on H all of whose integral curves are geodesics. Each geodesic foliation of H determines an n-dimensional submanifold M of the 2n-dimensional manifold L of all the oriented geodesics of H (up to orientation preserving reparametrizations). The space L has a canonical split semi-Riemannian metric induced by the Killing form of the isometry group of H. Using a split special Lagrangian calibration, we study the volume maximization problem for a certain class of geometrically distinguish…
We obtain geometric characterizations of isospectral minimal Riemannian Legendre foliations on compact Sasakian manifolds of constant $ϕ$-sectional curvature.
We prove the nonexistence of a proper singular Riemannian foliation admitting section in compact manifolds of nonpositive curvature. Then we give a global description of proper singular Riemannian foliations admitting sections on Hadamard manifolds. In addition by using the theory of taut immersions we provide a short proof of this result in the special case of a polar action.
We prove that a submanifold with parallel focal structure, which is a generalization of isoparametric and equifocal submanifolds, induces a singular Riemannian foliation of the ambient space by its parallel and focal manifolds.
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…
Let $(M,g_M,\mathcal F)$ be a closed, connected Riemannian manifold with a Riemannian foliation $\mathcal F$ of nonzero constant transversal scalar curvature. When $M$ admits a transversal nonisometric conformal field, we find some generalized conditions that $\mathcal F$ is transversally isometric to the sphere.
Motivated by Gray's work on tube formulae for complex submanifolds of complex projective space equipped with the Fubini-Study metric, Riemannian foliations of projective space are studied. We prove that there are no complex Riemannian foliations of any open subset of $\mathbb{P}^n$ of codimension one. As a consequence there is no Riemannian foliation of the projective plane by Riemann surfaces, even locally. We determine how a complex submanifold may arise as an exceptional leaf of a non-trivial singular Riemannian foliation of maximal dimension. Gray's tube formula is applied to obtain a volu…
We prove that a foliation $(M, F)$ of codimension $q$ on a $n$-dimen\-sio\-nal pseudo-Riemannian manifold is pseudo-Riemannian if and only if any geodesic that is orthogonal at one point to a leaf is orthogonal to every leaf it intersects. We show that on the graph $G = G(F)$ of a pseudo-Riemannian foliation there exists a unique pseudo-Riemannian metric such that canonical projections are pse\-u\-do-Rieman\-ni\-an submersions and the fibres of different projections are orthogonal at common points. Relatively this metric the induced foliation $(G,\mathbb{F})$ on the graph is pseudo-Riemannian …
We prove that Riemannian foliations on complete contractible manifolds have a closed leaf, and that all leaves are closed if one closed leaf has a finitely generated fundamental group. Under additional topological or geometric assumptions we prove that the foliation is also simple.
In this paper we survey on some recent results on Riemannian orbifolds and singular Riemannian foliations and combine them to conclude the existence of closed geodesics in the leaf space of some classes of singular Riemannian foliations (s.r.f.), namely s.r.f. that admit sections or have no horizontal conjugate points. We also investigate the shortening process with respect to Riemannian foliations.
In this paper, we consider a Riemannian foliation whose normal bundle carries a parallel or harmonic basic form. We estimate the norm of the O'Neill tensor in terms of the curvature data of the whole manifold. Some examples are then given.
In this work, we find an equation that relates the Ricci curvature of a riemannian manifold $M$ and the second fundamental forms of two orthogonal foliations of complementary dimensions, $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{F}^{\bot}$, defined on $M$. Using this equation, we show a sufficient condition for the manifold M to be locally a riemannian product of the leaves of $\mathcal{F}$ and $\mathcal{F}^{\bot}$, if one of the foliations is totally umbilical. We also prove an integral formula for such foliations.
We study Riemannian foliations with complex leaves on Kaehler manifolds. The tensor T, the obstruction to the foliation be totally geodesic, is interpreted as a holomorphic section of a certain vector bundle. This enables us to give classification results when the manifold is compact.
We investigate under which assumptions an orientable pseudo-Riemannian geodesic foliations by circles is generated by an $S^1$-action. We construct examples showing that, contrary to the Riemannian case, it is not always true. However, we prove that such an action always exists when the foliation does not contain lightlike leaves, i.e. a pseudo-Riemannian Wadsley's Theorem. As an application, we show that every Lorentzian surface all of whose spacelike/timelike geodesics are closed, is finitely covered by $S^1\times \R$. It follows that every Lorentzian surface contains a non-closed geodesic.
We consider foliations of the whole three dimensional hyperbolic space H^3 by oriented geodesics. Let L be the space of all the oriented geodesics of H^3, which is a four dimensional manifold carrying two canonical pseudo-Riemannian metrics of signature (2,2). We characterize, in terms of these geometries of L, the subsets M in L that determine foliations of H^3. We describe in a similar way some distinguished types of geodesic foliations of H^3, regarding to which extent they are in some sense trivial in some directions: On the one hand, foliations whose leaves do not lie in a totally geodesi…
R. Zimmer proved that, on a compact manifold, a foliation with a dense leaf, a suitable leafwise Riemannian symmetric metric and a transverse Lie structure has arithmetic holonomy group. In this work we improve such result for totally geodesic foliations by showing that the manifold itself is arithmetic. This also gives a positive answer, for some special cases, to a conjecture of E. Ghys.
We give a generalized curvature-dimension inequality connecting the geometry of sub-Riemannian manifolds with the properties of its sub-Laplacian. This inequality is valid on a large class of sub-Riemannian manifolds obtained from Riemannian foliations. We give a geometric interpretation of the invariants involved in the inequality. Using this inequality, we obtain a lower bound for the eigenvalues of the sub-Laplacian. This inequality also lays the foundation for proving several powerful results in Part~II.
We prove that an isometric action of a Lie group on a Riemannian manifold admits a resolution preserving the transverse geometry if and only if the action is infinitesimally polar. We provide applications concerning topological simplicity of several classes of isometric actions, including polar and variationally complete ones. All results are proven in the more general case of singular Riemannian foliations.
We prove transverse Weitzenböck identities for the horizontal Laplacians of a totally geodesic foliation. As a consequence, we obtain nullity theorems for the de Rham cohomology assuming only the positivity of curvature quantities transverse to the leaves. Those curvature quantities appear in the adiabatic limit of the canonical variation of the metric.
We prove an Atiyah-Bott-Berline-Vergne type localization formula for Killing foliations in the context of equivariant basic cohomology. As an application, we localize some Chern-Simons type invariants, for example the volume of Sasakian manifolds and secondary characteristic classes of Riemannian foliations, to the union of closed leaves. Various examples are given to illustrate our method.
In 86, Ranjan questioned whether a submersion $π: G\to B$ from a compact simple Lie group with bi-invariant metric is a coset foliation or not, provided the submersion is Riemannian with totally geodesic fibers. Here we answer this question affirmatively, even when the submersion is defined only in an open subset of $G$ (assuming suitable hypothesis).
Using representations of Clifford algebras we construct indecomposable singular Riemannian foliations on round spheres, most of which are non-homogeneous. This generalizes the construction of non-homogeneous isoparametric hypersurfaces due to by Ferus, Karcher and Munzner.
We study the transverse Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of a Riemannian foliation on a compact manifold. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition when the transverse LS category is finite. We also introduce a variation on the concept of transverse LS category, the essential transverse category, and show that this is finite for every Riemannian foliation and coincides with the transverse category if the latter is finite. Moreover we prove that the essential transverse category is a lower bound for the number of critical leaf closures of a basic differentiable function on M.
We classify hypersurfaces of the Minkowski space $Ł^{n+1}$ that carry a totally geodesic foliation with complete leaves of codimension one. We prove that such a hypersurface is ruled, or a partial tube over a curve or contains a two or three dimensional strip. Moreover, if the hypersurface is embedded then it is a partial tube over a curve.
We discuss the decomposition of degree two basic cohomology for codimension four taut Riemannian foliation according to the holonomy invariant transversal almost complex structure J, and show that J is C pure and full. In addition, we obtain an estimate of the dimension of basic J-anti-invariant subgroup. These are the foliated version for the corresponding results of T. Draghici et al.
In the current paper,under the transverse Ricci flow on a totally geodesic Riemannian foliation, we prove two types of differential Harnack inequalities (Li-Yau gradient estimate) for the positive solutions of the heat equation associated with the time dependent horizontal Laplacian operators. We also get a time dependent version of the generalized curvature dimension inequality. As a consequence of aforementioned results, we also get parabolic Harnack inequalities and heat kernel upper bounds.
We classify the hypersurfaces of Euclidean space that carry a totally geodesic foliation with complete leaves of codimension one. In particular, we show that rotation hypersurfaces with complete profiles of codimension one are characterized by their warped product structure. The local version of the problem is also considered.
Given a singular Riemannian foliation on a compact Riemannian manifold, we study the mean curvature flow equation with a regular leaf as initial datum. We prove that if the leaves are compact and the mean curvature vector field is basic, then any finite time singularity is a singular leaf, and the singularity is of type I. These results generalize previous results of Liu and Terng, Pacini and Koike. In particular our results can be applied to partitions of Riemannian manifolds into orbits of actions of compact groups of isometries.
We consider the basic heat operator on functions on a Riemannian foliation of a compact, Riemannian manifold, and we show that the trace of this operator has a particular short time asymptotic expansion. The coefficients in this expansion are obtainable from local transverse geometric invariants - functions computable by analyzing the manifold in an arbitrarily small neighborhood of a leaf closure. Using this expansion, we prove some results about the spectrum of the basic Laplacian, such as the analogue of Weyl's asymptotic formula. Also, we explicitly calculate the first two nontrivial coeff…
In this paper, we establish a number of results about the topology of the leaves of a closed singular Riemannian foliation $(M,\fol)$. If $M$ is simply connected, we prove that the leaves are finitely covered by nilpotent spaces, and characterize the fundamental group of the generic leaves. If $M$ has virtually nilpotent fundamental group, we prove that the leaves have virtually nilpotent fundamental group as well.
We define a new version of the exterior derivative on the basic forms of a Riemannian foliation to obtain a new form of basic cohomology that satisfies Poincaré duality in the transversally orientable case. We use this twisted basic cohomology to show relationships between curvature, tautness, and vanishing of the basic Euler characteristic and basic signature.
We study left-invariant foliations ${\mathcal F}$ on semi-Riemannian Lie groups $G$ generated by a subgroup $K$. We are interested in such foliations which are conformal and with minimal leaves of codimension two. We classify such foliations ${\mathcal F}$ when the subgroup $K$ is one of the important $\text{SU}(2)$, $\text{SL}_{2}(\mathbb R)$, $\text{SU}(2)\times\text{SU}(2)$, $\text{SU}(2)\times\text{SL}_{2}(\mathbb R)$, $\text{SU}(2)\times\text{SO}(2)$, $\text{SL}_{2}(\mathbb R)\times\text{SU}(2)$. This way we construct new multi-dimensional families of Lie groups $G$ carrying such foliatio…
For a singular Riemannian foliation whose leaves are properly embedded, we show in the first part of this article the existence of global tubular neighbourhoods, and we develop a global description of the foliation as stratification by types of leaves. The second part deals with the further restriction to a foliation without horizontal conjugate points, introduced by Lytchak and Thorbergsson, which in the special case of an isometric group action equals the concept of variationally completeness. Therefrom, we deduce a global geometric description -- the focal points of the leaves are exactly t…
In this paper we give a complete local parametric classification of the hypersurfaces with dimension at least three of a space form that carry a totally geodesic foliation of codimension one. A classification under the assumption that the leaves of the foliation are complete was given in \cite{drt} for Euclidean hypersurfaces. We prove that there exists exactly one further class of local examples in Euclidean space, all of which have rank two. We also extend the classification under the global assumption of completeness of the leaves for hypersurfaces of the sphere and show that there exist pl…
In this paper we present a certain class of geodesic vector fields of the double-twisted product R X R. Some examples of totally geodesic foliations are given.
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 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 previou…
We describe a local model for any Singular Riemannian Foliation in a neighbourhood of a closed saturated submanifold of a regular stratum. Moreover we construct a Lie groupoid which controls the transverse geometry of the linear approximation of the Singular Riemannian Foliation around these submanifolds. We also discuss the closure of this Lie groupoid and its Lie algebroid.
