On the horizontal diameter of the unit sphere (Q679736)

A \textit{singular Riemannian foliation} on a Riemannian manifold is a singular foliation with the property that every geodesic starting orthogonally to a leaf remains orthogonal to all leaves it intersects. In this setting, every curve which meets the leaves perpendicularly is called \textit{horizontal}. The \textit{horizontal distance} \(d_h(p,q)\) of points \(p, q\) of the manifold is defined as the infimum over the length of all horizontal curves connecting \(p\) and \(q\), whereas the \textit{horizontal diameter} of the manifold is the supremum of all horizontal distances. The authors consider singular Riemannian foliations on the unit sphere \({\mathbb S}^n\) and mainly show that its horizontal diameter equals \(\pi\) in each of the following cases. {\parindent=0.7cm \begin{itemize}\item[--] The quotient space (i.e., the space of the leaves) has diameter at least \(\pi/2\). \item[--] The maximal dimension of the leaves is at most \(n/2\). \item[--] All the leaves have the same dimension. \item[--] The foliation is a so-called Clifford foliation (its definition is given). \item[--] The foliation is induced by isometric torus actions. \item[--] The dimension of the leaves is at most 2. \item[--] The foliation is produced by a so-called spherical join (its definition is given). \item[--] The foliation is given by the orbits of a reducible orthogonal representation. \end{itemize}}