Dirk Töben

Parallel focal structure and singular Riemannian foliations

We give a necessary and sufficient condition for a submanifold with parallel focal structure to give rise to a global foliation of the ambient space by parallel and focal manifolds. We show that this is a singular Riemannian foliation with complete orthogonal transversals. For this object we construct an action on the transversals that generalizes the Weyl group action for polar actions.

Equifocality of a singular Riemannian foliation

A singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold M 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.

PROGRESS IN THE THEORY OF SINGULAR RIEMANNIAN FOLIATIONS

Abstract 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. Sketches of proofs are included and useful techniques are emphasized. We study the local structure of SRFs in general and under curvature conditions in particular. We also review the solution of the Palais–Terng problem on integrability of the horizontal distribution. Important special classes of SRFs, like polar and variationally complete foliations and their relations, are treated. A characterization of SRFs whose leaf space is an orbifold is given. Moreover, desingularizations of SRFs are studied and applications, e.g., to Molinoʼs conjecture, are presented.

EQUIVARIANT BASIC COHOMOLOGY OF RIEMANNIAN FOLIATIONS

Abstract The basic cohomology of a complete Riemannian foliation with all leaves closed is the cohomology of the leaf space. In this paper we introduce various methods to compute the basic cohomology in the presence of both closed and non-closed leaves in the simply-connected case (or more generally for Killing foliations): We show that the total basic Betti number of the union C of the closed leaves is smaller than or equal to the total basic Betti number of the foliated manifold, and we give sufficient conditions for equality. If there is a basic Morse–Bott function with critical set equal to C, we can compute the basic cohomology explicitly. Another case in which the basic cohomology can be determined is if the space of leaf closures is a simple, convex polytope. Our results are based on Molino’s observation that the existence of non-closed leaves yields a distinguished transverse action on the foliated manifold with fixed point set C. We introduce equivariant basic cohomology of transverse actions in analogy to equivariant cohomology of Lie group actions enabling us to transfer many results from the theory of Lie group actions to Riemannian foliations. The prominent role of the fixed point set in the theory of torus actions explains the relevance of the set C in the basic setting.

TORUS ACTIONS WHOSE EQUIVARIANT COHOMOLOGY IS COHEN-MACAULAY

We study Cohen–Macaulay actions, a class of torus actions on manifolds, possibly without fixed points, which generalizes and has analogous properties as equivariantly formal actions. Their equivariant cohomology algebras are computable in the sense that a Chang–Skjelbred Lemma, and its stronger version, the exactness of an Atiyah–Bredon sequence, hold. The main difference is that the fixed-point set is replaced by the union of lowest dimensional orbits. We find sufficient conditions for the Cohen–Macaulay property such as the existence of an invariant Morse–Bott function whose critical set is the union of lowest dimensional orbits, or open-face-acyclicity of the orbit space. Specializing to the case of torus manifolds, that is, 2r-dimensional orientable compact manifolds acted on by r-dimensional tori, the latter is similar to a result of Masuda and Panov, and the converse of the result of Bredon that equivariantly formal torus manifolds are open-face-acyclic.

Localization of Chern–Simons type invariants of Riemannian foliations

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.

Transverse LS category for Riemannian foliations

We study the transverse Lusternik-Schnirelmann category theory of a Riemannian foliation F on a closed manifold M. The essential transverse category cat e (M, F) is introduced in this paper, and we prove that cat e (M, F) is always finite for a Riemannian foliation. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for when the usual transverse category cat (M, F) is finite, and thus cat e (M, F) = cat(M, F) holds. A fundamental point of this paper is to use properties of Riemannian submersions and the Molino Structure Theory for Riemannian foliations to transform the calculation of cat e (M, F) into a standard problem about O(q)-equivariant LS category theory. A main result, Theorem 1.6, states that for an associated O(q)-manifold W, we have that cat e (M, F) = cat O(q) (Ŵ). Hence, the traditional techniques developed for the study of smooth compact Lie group actions can be effectively employed for the study of the LS category of Riemannian foliations. A generalization of the Lusternik-Schnirelmann theorem is derived: given a C 1 -function f: M → R which is constant along the leaves of a Riemannian foliation F, the essential transverse category cat e (M, F) is a lower bound for the number of critical leaf closures of f.