Secondary invariants of transversely homogeneous foliations (Q1821393)

For a codimension q foliation \({\mathcal F}\) of a manifold M let \(\alpha_{{\mathcal F}}: H^*(WO_ q)\to H^*_{DR}(M)\) be the characteristic homomorphism defining the secondary characteristic classes of \({\mathcal F}\). Let \(SL(n+1, {\mathbb{R}})\) act on \(S^ n\) as the space of directed lines. The author shows that if \(\pi_ 1M\) is finitely generated then for any \(\gamma \in H^*(WO_ q)\) the set of values \(\alpha_{{\mathcal F}}(\gamma)\in H^*_{DR}(M)\) is finite, where \({\mathcal F}\) varies over all codimension q transversely \((SL(q+1, {\mathbb{R}}),S^ q)\)-foliations. The author first deals with the Pontryagin classes in \(H^*(WO_ q)\) showing that for the foliations in question they evaluate to 0. For the secondary classes he shows that they only depend on the homotopy class of the global holonomy map \(\pi_ 1M\to SL(q+1, {\mathbb{R}})\). By a result of Sullivan there are only finitely many of these, and the result follows.