Hadamard foliations of \(\mathbb H^n\) (Q1877081)

A simply connected, complete Riemannian \(n\)-dimensional (\(n\geq 2\)) manifold with nonpositive sectional curvature is called a Hadamard manifold. Let \(\mathcal F\) be a foliation of a Hadamard manifold \(M\). Then \(\mathcal F\) is said to be a Hadamard foliation if and only if all leaves of \(\mathcal F\) are Hadamard manifolds. If \(L\in\mathcal F\) then denote by \(B_L\) the second fundamental form of \(L\). Define \[ \| B_L\| =\sup_{x\in L}\sup_{v\in T^1_x L}\| B_L( v,v)\| \] and \[ \| B_{\mathcal F}\| = \sup_{L\in\mathcal F}\| B_L\|. \] The author shows that if \(M\) is a Hadamard manifold with the curvature \(\leq -a^2\) (\(a>0\)) and \(\mathcal F\) is a foliation of \(M\) with \(\text{codim}\mathcal F=1\) and \(\| B_{\mathcal F}\|\leq a\) then \(\mathcal F\) is a Hadamard foliation. Next, the author proves that in the case of the hyperbolic space \(\mathbb H^n\) the above result can be generalized to an arbitrary codimension \(\leq n-2\). For a Hadamard manifold \(M\), denote by \(M(\infty)\) the quotient space of all geodesic rays which are parametrized by arc length by the equivalence relation which identifies two rays when they are asymptotic. One introduces in \(M(\infty)\) the cone topology. If \(A\subset M\), then by \(A(\infty)\) denote the set of all ends of rays entirely contained in \(A\). If \(\mathcal F\) is a foliation of \(M\) then the set \(\bigcup _{L\in\mathcal F}L(\infty)\) can be identified with \(T^1\mathcal F/\sim\) with the equivalence relation \(\sim\) defined as follows: \[ v\sim w\Longleftrightarrow \gamma^{\mathcal F}_v(\infty)=\gamma^{\mathcal F}_w(\infty) \] where \(\gamma^{\mathcal F}_v\) is the geodesic in a leaf of \(\mathcal F\) tangent to \(v\). The quotient topology is called a canonical topology of \(\bigcup _{L\in\mathcal F}L(\infty)\). The main theorem: Let \(\mathcal F\) be a \(C^2\)- foliation of \(\mathbb H^n\) with codimension \(\leq n-2\) and \(\| B_{\mathcal F}\|<1\). Then the mapping \(\Phi:\bigcup _{L\in\mathcal F}L(\infty)\to\mathbb H^n(\infty)\) defined by \(\Phi([\gamma]) =\gamma(\infty)\) is continuous with respect to the topologies mentioned above. Moreover, \(\Phi\) restricted to an arbitrary leaf of \(\mathcal F\) is a homeomorphism onto its image.