Poincaré duality of the basic intersection cohomology of a Killing foliation (Q284086): Difference between revisions

For a smooth regular foliation \(\mathcal F\) on a manifold \(M\), the basic complex \(\Omega^*(M/{\mathcal F})\) is the subcomplex of the de~Rham complex \(\Omega^*(M)\) that consists of the differential forms \(\omega\) such that \(\omega\) and \(d\omega\) vanish on vectors tangent to the leaves. Its cohomology, \(H^*(M/{\mathcal F})\), is called the basic cohomology, and can play the role of the de~Rham cohomology of the leaf space \(M/{\mathcal F}\). The basic cohomology does not behave well in general. For this reason, the condition on \(\mathcal F\) to be Riemannian was introduced, which means that the leaves of \(\mathcal F\) are locally given by the fibers of local Riemannian submersions for some Riemannian metric on \(M\). Such a metric is called bundle-like, and can be also characterized by requiring that geodesics orthogonal to a leaf at some point remain orthogonal to the leaves everywhere. When \(M\) is compact and \(\mathcal F\) is Riemannian, \textit{A. El Kacimi Alaoui} et al. have shown that \(H^*(M/{\mathcal F})\) is of finite dimension [Math. Z. 188, 593--599 (1985; Zbl 0536.57013)], and \textit{V. Sergiescu} has proved that \(H^*(M/{\mathcal F})\) satisfies a version of Poincaré duality under certain orientation and tautness assumptions [Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble) 35, 137--158 (1985; Zbl 0563.57012)]. The contribution of the paper under review is a step towards generalizing the above results to the setting of a singular Riemannian foliation (SRF) \(\mathcal F\) on a compact manifold \(M\), introduced by \textit{P. Molino} [Riemannian foliations. With appendices by G. Cairns, Y. Carrière, E. Ghys, E. Salem, V. Sergiescu. Transl. from the French by Grant Cairns. Boston, MA etc.: Birkhäuser Verlag (1988; Zbl 0633.53001)]. The leaves of singular foliations may have different dimensions, and the Riemannian condition means that there is a Riemannian metric on \(M\) so that the geodesics that are orthogonal to the leaves at some point remain orthogonal to the leaves everywhere (the second description of bundle-like metrics generalizes to the singular case). A class SRFs is defined by Killing foliations, whose leaves are the connected components of the orbits of isometric Lie group actions. A canonical stratification on \(M\) can be defined using the dimension of the leaves, giving rise to the concept of basic intersection forms on the regular stratum \(R_{\mathcal F}\) with perversity \(\bar p\), defining the basic intersection cohomology (BIC) \({\mathbb H}_{\bar p}^*(M/{\mathcal F})\), a basic cohomology version of the intersection homology introduced for pseudomanifolds by \textit{M. Goresky} and \textit{R. MacPherson} [Topology 19, 135--165 (1980; Zbl 0448.55004)]. The authors require the restriction on \(\mathcal F\) to be Killing. Then they had already proved that \({\mathbb H}_{\bar p}^*(M/{\mathcal F})\) is of finite dimension [Math. Z. 272, No. 1--2, 443--457 (2012; Zbl 1255.57030)]. Now, they show a version of Poincaré duality, \({\mathbb H}_{\bar p}^*(M/{\mathcal F})\cong{\mathbb H}_{\bar q}^{m-w-*}(M/{\mathcal F})\), where \(\bar p\) and \(\bar q\) are complementary perversities, \(m=\dim M\), and \(w=\dim{\mathcal F}\) (the dimension of the leaves in \(R_{\mathcal F}\)).