The diffeomorphism group of a Lie foliation (Q538800)

The paper studies the group of diffeomorphisms of the leaf space of certain foliations on tori. The leaf space of a foliation is rarely a nice topological space and admits a smooth structure in the sense of the theory of manifolds only when the foliation is defined by a global submersion with connected fibres. However, leaf spaces naturally admit (smooth) diffeological structures and it makes sense to consider the group of diffeomorphisms of the leaf space of a foliation. In the paper the authors investigate the group of diffeomorphisms of the leaf space of a Lie foliation, sometimes called the group of transverse diffeomorphisms of the foliation. In the case of Lie foliations the group of transverse diffeomorphisms is isomorphic to the group of diffeomorphisms of the homogeneous space \(G/\Gamma\) where \(G\) is the simply connected Lie group on which the foliation is modelled and \(\Gamma\) the holonomy group of the foliation. The main result (Theorem 5.9) asserts that for linear non-quadratic foliations of tori the group of transverse diffeomorphisms is very small, in fact, isomorphic to \(\mathbb Z_2\).