We prove that if the normal distribution of a singular riemannian foliation 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 transverse orbit of the closure of each leaf. Furthermore we prove that the closure 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.
A leafwise Hodge decomposition was proved by Sanguiao for Riemannian foliations of bounded geometry. Its proof is explained again in terms of our study of bounded geometry for Riemannian foliations. It is used to associate smoothing operators to foliated flows, and describe their Schwartz kernels. All of this is extended to a leafwise version of the Novikov differential complex.
In this paper we study singular riemannian foliations that have sections,i.e., totally geodesic complete immersed submanifolds that meet each leaf orthogonally and whose dimensions are the codimensions of the regular leaves. We prove here that the restriction of the foliation to a slice of a leaf is diffeomorphic to an isoparametric foliation on an open set of an euclidian space. This result gives us local information about the singular foliation and in particular about the singular stratification of the foliation. It also allows us to describe the plaques of the foliation as level sets of a t…
Continuing the study of bounded geometry for Riemannian foliations, begun by Sanguiao, we introduce a chart-free definition of this concept. Our main theorem states that it is equivalent to a condition involving certain normal foliation charts. For this type of charts, it is also shown that the derivatives of the changes of coordinates are uniformly bounded, and there are nice partitions of unity. Applications to a trace formula for foliated flows will given in a forthcoming paper.
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…
The purpose of this paper is to both survey and offer some new results on the non-triviality of the characteristic classes of Riemannian foliations. We give examples where the primary Pontrjagin classes are all linearly independent. The independence of the secondary classes is also discussed, along with their total variation. Finally, we give a negative solution of a conjecture that the map of classifying spaces $\FRGq \to \FGq$ is trivial for codimension $q > 1$.
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.
We use the symbol calculus for foliations developed in our previous paper to derive a cohomological formula for the Connes-Chern character of the semi-finite spectral triple. The same proof works for the Type I spectral triple of Connes-Moscovici. The cohomology classes of the two Connes-Chern characters induce the same map on the image of the maximal Baum-Connes map in K-theory, thereby proving an Atiyah $L^2$ covering index theorem.
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.
Every open manifold L of dimension greater than one has complete Riemannian metrics g with bounded geometry such that (L,g) is not quasi-isometric to a leaf of a codimension one foliation of a closed manifold. Hence no conditions on the local geometry of (L,g) suffice to make it quasi-isometric to a leaf of such a foliation. We introduce the `bounded homology property', a semi-local property of (L,g) that is necessary for it to be a leaf in a compact manifold in codimension one, up to quasi-isometry. An essential step involves a partial generalization of the Novikov closed leaf theorem to high…
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.
In this paper, we give a systematic study of Seiberg-Witten theory on closed oriented manifold $M$ with codimension-$3$ oriented Riemannian foliation $F$. Under a certain topological condition, we construct the basic Seiberg-Witten invariant and the monopole Floer homologies $\bar{HM}(M,F,\mfs;Γ),~\hat{HM}(M,F,\mfs;Γ), ~\widecheck{HM}(M,F,\mfs;Γ)$, for each transverse \spinc structure $\mfs$, where $Γ$ is a complete local system. We will show that these homologies are independent of the bundle-like metric and generic perturbation. The major difference between the basic monopole Floer homologie…
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.
We define Seiberg-Witten equations on closed manifolds endowed with a Riemannian foliation of codimension 4. When the foliation is taut, we show compactness of the moduli space under some hypothesis satisfied for instance by closed K-contact manifolds. Furthermore, we prove some vanishing and non-vanishing results and we highlight that the invariants may be used to distinguish different foliations on diffeomorphic manifolds.
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.
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 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 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 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.
We construct spectral triples in a sense of noncommutative differential geometry, associated with a Riemannian foliation on a compact manifold, and describe its dimension spectrum.
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.
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 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.
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.
We present a new link between the Invariant Theory of infinitesimal singular Riemannian foliations and Jordan algebras. This, together with an inhomogeneous version of Weyl's First Fundamental Theorems, provides a characterization of the recently discovered Clifford foliations in terms of basic polynomials. This link also yields new structural results about infinitesimal foliations, such as the existence of non-trivial symmetries.
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).
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.
First, we survey some results on classical and quantum dynamical systems associated with transverse Dirac operators on Riemannian foliations. Then we illustrate these results by two examples of Riemannian foliations: a foliation given by the fibers of a fibration and a linear foliation on the two-dimensional torus.
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.
