Minimizability of developable Riemannian foliations (Q1959092)

The author studies the minimizability of developable Riemannian foliations. The foliated manifold \((M,{\mathcal F})\) is developable if there exists a covering space \(\widetilde M@>\pi>>M\) such that the leaves of \(\pi^*{\mathcal F}\) are ``fibers'' of a submersion. A foliated manifold \((M,{\mathcal F})\) is minimizable if there exists a Riemannian metric \(g\) on \(M\) such that every leaf \(L\in{\mathcal F}\) is a minimal submanifold of \((M,g)\). The author proves several results related to: unipatency of the holonomy homomorphism of Molino's commuting sheaves, vanishing of secondary characteristic classes of flat vector bundles with unipotent holonomy homomorphisms, Riemannian foliations of codimension 2 on fiber bundles over \(S^1\). The main results of this work are: Theorem 1: The secondary characteristic classes of Molino's commuting sheaf of \((M,{\mathcal F})\) vanish if \({\mathcal F}\) is deveopable and \(\pi_1M\) has polynomial growth. Theorem 2: A transversely parallelizable foliation of codimension \(q\leq 3\) on a closed manifold with fundamental group of polynomial growth is minimizable. Some important particular cases (examples) are studied, too.