Transversely holomorphic branched Cartan geometry (Q1629694)

In [``Branched holomorphic Cartan geometries and Calabi-Yau manifolds'', Int. Math. Res. Not. (to appear); \url{doi:10.1093/imrn/rny003}] the authors generalised to higher dimensions (and complex manifolds) Mandelbaum's branched complex projective structure of a Riemann surface. The paper under review is a foliated version of the notion of branched Cartan geometry introduced in [loc. cit.]. The setting here is a complex manifold endowed with a holomorphic foliation. Using the notion of Atiyah algebroid, the authors define a notion of branched holomorphic Cartan geometry which is transverse to the given foliation. The case of such Cartan geometries as above which are flat away from the branching divisor is studied first. In this case the foliation is modelled on a homogeneous space (cf. [\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 authors show that in this case the foliation is the vertical bundle of a map from the universal cover to the modelling homogeneous space. As far as the question whether Cartan geometries as such exist, the authors show that this is the case for any complex compact manifold, away from a closed analytic subset of positive codimension. Using the Chern class, a criterion is given for a holomorphic foliation to admit a Cartan geometry as such. Moreover, for simply connected Calabi-Yau manifolds it is shown that all the Cartan geometries as above are flat.