A sufficient condition for the leaves of a totally umbilic foliation to be conformally complete (Q1092421)

Let \({\mathcal F}\) be a totally umbilic foliation of dimension \(m\geq 3\) of the Riemann manifold M. We give a sufficient condition (involving the Weyl conformal tensor of M and the Weyl conformal tensor of the leaves of \({\mathcal F})\) for the leaves of \({\mathcal F}\) to be conformally complete. When this occurs, the distribution D orthogonal to the leaves of \({\mathcal F}\) is an Ehresmann connection for \({\mathcal F}\). This has strong global consequences for the foliation. In particular, 1. All the leaves of \({\mathcal F}\) have conformally equivalent universal covers. 2. If D is integrable, then the universal cover \~M of M decomposes as \~M\(=\tilde L\times N\) where \~L is the universal cover of the leaves of \({\mathcal F}\) and N is the universal cover of the leaves of D. 3. A horizontal curve is a piecewise smooth curve \(\sigma\) : [0,1]\(\to M\) whose tangent vector field lies in D. For \(x\in M\), let P(x) be the set of points in M that can be joined to x by a horizontal curve. Then the sets P(x) are immersed submanifolds of M. 4. One can define the globalized holonomy groups \(H_ D(L,p)\) and one has the following stability theorem: if \({\mathcal F}\) has a compact leaf \(L_ 0\) with \(H_ D(L_ 0,p_ 0)\) finite, then every leaf L of \({\mathcal F}\) is compact with \(H_ D(L,p)\) finite.