Geodesic foliations in Lorentz 3-manifolds (Q1284455)

This paper surveys various questions about foliations of manifolds with Lorentz metrics, particularly in dimension 3. A submanifold \(V\) of a Lorentzian manifold \(M\) is geodesic if it contains geodesics of \(M\) which are somewhere tangent to \(V\). A submanifold is lightlike if the restriction of the Lorentzian metric is degenerate. This paper studies foliations of Lorentzian 3-manifolds whose leaves are lightlike geodesic submanifolds. Examples of such structures are given, and many arise from locally free actions of two-dimensional Lie groups. The main part of this paper discusses criteria for when a \(C^0\) timelike geodesic foliation arises in this way (``rigidity''). The paper contains several regularity results, proving that in codimension one, geodesic foliations endowed with smooth connections are locally Lipschitz and lightlike geodesic foliations of real analytic Lorentzian 3-manifolds are analytic in a nonempty open set, if the curvature of \(M\) is nonconstant. The paper goes on to prove rigidity for various classes of \(C^0\) lightlike geodesic foliations on Lorentzian 3-manifolds: weak stable foliations of Anosov flows, when \(M\) has constant curvature, when the foliation admits no transverse invariant measure, and for foliated \(S^1\)-bundles over surfaces. Finally, the paper gives various quantitative results about \(C^0\) lightlike geodesic foliations: every leaf is homeomorphic to a plane, cylinder or torus; no vanishing cycle exists; the universal covering is homeomorphic to \(\mathbb R^3\) foliated by planes.