We prove a transverse diameter theorem in the context of Lorentzian foliations, which can be interpreted as a Hawking--Penrose-type singularity theorem for timelike geodesics transverse to the foliation. In order to develop the necessary machinery we introduce and study a novel causality structure on the leaf space via the transverse Lorentzian geometry on the foliated manifold. We describe the initial rungs of a transverse causal ladder and relate them to their standard counterparts on an underlying foliated spacetime. We show how these results can be interpreted as doing Lorentzian (and more generally semi-Riemannian) geometry on low-regularity spaces that can be realized as leaf spaces of foliations. Accordingly, we discuss how all of these concepts and results apply to Lorentzian orbifolds, insofar as these can be seen as leaf spaces of a specific class of Lorentzian foliations. In particular, we derive an associated Lorentzian timelike diameter theorem on orbifolds.
We study the lightlike foliations that appear on Lorentzian manifolds with weakly irreducible not irreducible holonomy algebra. We give global structure equations for the foliation that generalize the Gauss and Weingarten equations for one lightlike hypersurface. This gives us some global operators on the manifold. Using these operators, we decompose the curvature tensor of the manifold into several components. We give a criteria how to find the type of the holonomy algebras (there are 4 possible types) in terms of the global operators.
A parallel lightlike vector field on a Lorentzian manifold $X$ naturally defines a foliation $\mathcal{F}$ of codimension one. If either all leaves of $\mathcal{F}$ are compact or $X$ itself is compact admitting a compact leaf and the (transverse) Ricci curvature is non-negative then a Bochner type argument implies that the first Betti number of $X$ is bounded by $1 \leq b_{1} \leq \dim X$ if $X$ is compact and $0 \leq b_{1} \leq \dim X -1$ otherwise. We show that these bounds are optimal and depending on the holonomy of $X$ we obtain further results. Finally, we classify the holonomy represen…
We show that many Lorentzian manifolds of dimension >2 do not admit a spacelike codimension-one foliation, and that almost every manifold of dimension >2 which admits a Lorentzian metric at all admits one which satisfies the dominant energy condition and the timelike convergence condition. These two seemingly unrelated statements have in fact the same origin. We also discuss the problem of topology change in General Relativity. A theorem of Tipler says that topology change is impossible via a spacetime cobordism whose Ricci curvature satisfies the strict lightlike convergence condition. In his…
We study transversely Lorentzian foliations on the closed 3-manifolds. We classify them under a completeness hypothesis and we deduce the dual classification of codimension 1 geodesically complete timelike totally geodesic foliations. Besides we provide an example of a Lorentzian foliation on a compact 3-manifold which is equicontinuous on a proper dense open subset of the manifold, and hence not transversely complete.
In recent years a lot of attention has been paid to topological spaces which are a bit more general than smooth manifolds - orbifolds. Orbifolds are intuitively speaking manifolds with some singularities. The formal definition is also modelled on that of manifolds, an orbifold is a topological space which locally is homeomorphic to the orbit space of a finite group acting on $R^n$. Orbifolds were defined by Satake, as V-manifolds, then studied by W. Thurston, who introduced the term "orbifold". Due to their importance in physics, and in particular in the string theory, orbifolds have been draw…
We show that if $(\mathbb{T}^{2},g)$ is a class A Lorentzian 2-torus with timelike poles, then there exists a Lipschitz foliation by complete future-directed timelike geodesics with any pre-assigned asymptotic direction in the interior of the stable time cone. This is done by constructing certain $C^{1,1}$ solutions to the equation $g(\nabla u,\nabla u)=-1$ on the Abelian cover $(\mathbb{R}^{2},g)$.
Topology of singular foliations of closed 1-forms on orbifolds
Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade Federal Fluminense（联邦弗拉明戈大学数学与统计研究所）；Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学数学与统计研究所）
Given a (possibly singular) Riemannian foliation $\mathcal{F}$ with closed leaves on a compact manifold $M$ with an adapted metric, we investigate the wave trace invariants for the basic Laplacian about a non-zero period. We compare them to the wave invariants of the underlying Riemannian orbifold that exists when the leaves in the regular region are identified to points, equipped with the metric that is transverse to the leaves of the foliation. Recalling that the basic Laplacian differs from the underlying orbifold Laplacian by a term that is the mean curvature vector field associated to the…
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 Rieman…
Let M be a rank 1 affine invariant orbifold in a stratum of the moduli space of flat surfaces. We show that the leaves of the M-isoperiodic foliation are either all closed or all dense. In the second case, we establish ergodicity of the foliation with respect to the affine measure on M.
We study totally geodesic codimension 1 smooth foliations on Lorentzian manifold. We are in particular interested by the relations between riemannian flows and geodesic foliations. We prove that, up to a 2-cover, any Seifert bundle admit such a foliation.
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.
Negative Sasakian manifolds, where the first Chern class of the contact subbundle is a torsion class, can be viewed as Seifert-$S^1$ bundles where the base orbifold has an ample orbifold canonical class. We use this framework to settle completely an open problem formulated by C.Boyer and K.Galicki which asks whether or not arbitrary connected sums of $S^2\times S^3$ are negative Sasakian manifolds. As a consequence of the affirmative answer to this problem, there exists so-called Sasaki eta-Einstein and Lorentzian Sasaki-Einstein metrics on all of these five-manifolds and moreover all of these…
We introduce a category of rigid geometries on singular spaces which are leaf spaces of foliations and are considered as leaf manifolds. We single out a special category $\mathfrak F_0$ of leaf manifolds containing the orbifold category as a full subcategory. Objects of $\mathfrak F_0$ may have non-Hausdorff topology unlike the orbifolds. The topology of some objects of $\mathfrak F_0$ does not satisfy the separation axiom $T_0$. It is shown that for every ${\mathcal N}\in Ob(\mathfrak F_0)$ a rigid geometry $ζ$ on $\mathcal N$ admits a desingularization. Moreover, for every such $\mathcal N$ …
We show that a compact manifold admitting a Killing foliation with positive transverse curvature fibers over finite quotients of spheres or weighted complex projective spaces, provided that the singular foliation defined by the closures of the leaves has maximal dimension. This result is obtained by deforming the foliation into a closed one while maintaining transverse geometric properties, which allows us to apply results from the Riemannian geometry of orbifolds to the space of leaves. We also show that the basic Euler characteristic is preserved by such deformations. Using this fact we prov…
A singular foliation is called a singular Riemannian foliation (SRF) if every geodesic that is perpendicular to one leaf is perpendicular to every leaf it meets. A typical example is the partition of a complete Riemannian manifold into orbits of an isometric action. In this survey, we provide an introduction to the theory of SRFs, leading from the foundations to recent developments in research on this subject. Sketches of proofs are included and useful techniques are emphasized. We study the local structure of SRFs in general and under curvature conditions. We review the solution of the Palais…
The theory of twistors on foliated manifolds is developed and the twistor space of the normal bundle is constructed. It is demonstrated that the classical constructions of the twistor theory lead to foliated objects and permit to formulate and prove foliated versions of some well-known results on holomorphic mappings. Since any orbifold can be understood as the leaf space of a suitable defined Riemannian foliation we obtain orbifold versions of the classical results as a simple consequence of the results on foliated mappings.
We review recent work on the local geometry and optimal regularity of Lorentzian manifolds with bounded curvature. Our main results provide an estimate of the injectivity radius of an observer, and a local canonical foliations by CMC (Constant Mean Curvature) hypersurfaces, together with spatially harmonic coordinates. In contrast with earlier results based on a global bound for derivatives of the curvature, our method requires only a sup-norm bound on the curvature near the given observer.
Consider a singular Riemannian foliation (s.r.f for short) on a compact manifold. By successive blow-ups along the strata, we construct a regular Riemannian foliation on another compact Riemannian manifold and a desingularization map that projects leaves of the regular Riemannian foliation into leaves of the s.r.f. This result generalizes a previous result due to Molino for the particular case of a singular Riemannian foliation whose leaves were the closure of leaves of a regular Riemannian foliation. We also prove that, if the leaves of the s.r.f are compact, then, for each small epsilon, the…
A singular riemannian 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 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 pro…
In this paper, we show that the uniform L^{4}-bound of the transverse Ricci curvature along the Sasaki-Ricci flow on a compact quasi-regular Sasakian (2n+1)-manifold M of general type. As an application, any solution of the normalized Sasaki-Ricci flow converges in the Cheeger-Gromov sense to the unique singular Sasaki η-Einstein metric on the transverse canonical model M_{can} of M if n is less than or equal to 3. In particular for n equal to 2, M_{can} is a S^{1}-orbibundle over the unique Keahler-Einstein orbifold surface (Z_{can},ω_{KE}) with finite point orbifold singularities. The floati…
In this paper we study the Lie groupoids which appear in foliation theory. A foliation groupoid is a Lie groupoid which integrates a foliation, or, equivalently, whose anchor map is injective. The first theorem shows that, for a Lie groupoid G, the following are equivalent: - G is a foliation groupoid, - G has discrete isotropy groups, - G is Morita equivalent to an etale groupoid. Moreover, we show that among the Lie groupoids integrating a given foliation, the holonomy and the monodromy groupoids are extreme examples. The second theorem shows that the cyclic homology of convolution algebras …
In this paper, the authors consider leaf spaces of singular Riemannian foliations $\mathcal{F}$ on compact manifolds $M$ and the associated $\mathcal{F}$-basic spectrum on $M$, $spec_B(M, \mathcal{F}),$ counted with multiplicities. Recently, a notion of smooth isometry $φ: M_1/\mathcal{F}_1\rightarrow M_2/\mathcal{F}_2$ between the leaf spaces of such singular Riemannian foliations $(M_1,\mathcal{F}_1)$ and $(M_2,\mathcal{F}_2)$ has appeared in the literature. In this paper, the authors provide an example to show that the existence a smooth isometry of leaf spaces as above is not sufficient to…
In this paper, we show that the uniform L^4-bound of the transverse Ricci curvature along the Sasaki-Ricci flow on a compact quasi-regular transverse Fano Sasakian (2n+1)-manifold M. When M is dimension up to seven and the space of leaves of the characteristic foliation is well-formed, we first show that any solution of the Sasaki-Ricci flow converges in the Cheeger-Gromov sense to the unique singular orbifold Sasaki-Ricci soliton on the limit space which is a S^1-orbibundle over the unique singular Kaehler-Ricci soliton on a normal projective variety with codimension two orbifold singularitie…
Many mathematical models of physical phenomena that have been proposed in recent years require more general spaces than manifolds. When taking into account the symmetry group of the model, we get a reduced model on the (singular) orbit space of the symmetry group action. We investigate quantization of singular spaces obtained as leaf closure spaces of regular Riemannian foliations on compact manifolds. These contain the orbit spaces of compact group actions and orbifolds. Our method uses foliation theory as a desingularization technique for such singular spaces. A quantization procedure on the…
The theories of strings and $D$-branes have motivated the development of non Abelian cohomology techniques in differential geometry, on the purpose to find a geometric interpretation of characteristic classes. The spaces studied here, like orbifolds are not often smooth. In classical differential geometry, non smooth spaces appear also naturally, for example in the theory of foliations, the space of leaves can be an orbifold with singularities. The scheme to study these structures is identical: classical tools used in differential geometry, like connections, curvature are adapted. The purpose …
Motivated by the moduli theory of taut contact circles on spherical 3-manifolds, we relate taut contact circles to transversely holomorphic flows. We give an elementary survey of such 1-dimensional foliations from a topological viewpoint. We describe a complex analogue of the classical Godbillon-Vey invariant, the so-called Bott invariant, and a logarithmic monodromy of closed leaves. The Bott invariant allows us to formulate a generalised Gauß-Bonnet theorem. We compute these invariants for the Poincaré foliations on the 3-sphere and derive rigidity statements, including a uniformisation theo…
We describe various equivalent ways of associating to an orbifold, or more generally a higher étale differentiable stack, a weak homotopy type. Some of these ways extend to arbitrary higher stacks on the site of smooth manifolds, and we show that for a differentiable stack X arising from a Lie groupoid G, the weak homotopy type of X agrees with that of BG. Using this machinery, we are able to find new presentations for the weak homotopy type of certain classifying spaces. In particular, we give a new presentation for the Borel construction of an almost free action of a Lie group G on a smooth …
