Algebraic nature of singular Riemannian foliations in spheres (Q1992253)

Singular foliations (or \textit{smooth} singular foliations) are partitions of smooth manifolds by immersed submanifolds (\textit{leaves}) such that there is a collection of smooth vector fields on the manifold that spans the tangent space to the leaves at each point. The word \textit{singular} implies that the dimensions of the leaves are not constant. On a Riemannian manifold, we say that a singular foliation is a \textit{singular Riemannian foliation} (SRF) if every geodesic orthogonal to one leaf is orthogonal to each leaf that it meets. The orbits of isometric Lie group actions on a Riemannian manifold form a singular Riemannian foliation, but there are many other types of examples. Many researchers have worked on classification problems, such as to characterize isoparametric hypersurfaces in space forms, or to classify isometric cohomogeneity-one actions on Riemannian manifolds. In the paper under review, the authors prove that given any SRF with closed leaves on the unit Euclidean sphere \(S^n\), there is a polynomial map to \(\mathbb{R}^k\) such that the leaves of the foliation are precisely the fibers of that map. Thus, every leaf of the foliation is a real analytic subvariety of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). The primary tool used to prove this main result is the averaging operator \(f\mapsto [f]\) defined for any \(L^1_{\mathrm{loc}}\) function \(f\) on an SRF \((M,\mathcal{F})\) with closed leaves by \[ [f](x)=\frac 1{\mathrm{Vol}(L_x)}\int_{L_x} f, \] where \(L_x\) is the leaf containing \(x\in M\). As is typical in the foliation business, the mean curvature plays an important role. The mean curvature one-form, which is dual to the mean curvature vector field, is well defined on the regular stratum of the SRF, the union of leaves of maximal dimension, which is open and dense in the manifold. Often this form is assumed to be \textit{basic}, meaning that it can be expressed locally in terms of the transverse variables alone. This condition is automatically satisfied for SRFs on spheres with the Euclidean round metric. The authors show that for any SRF with closed leaves with basic mean curvature, the averaging function maps smooth functions to smooth basic functions. This result was already known for the case of regular Riemannian foliations [\textit{E. Park} and \textit{K. Richardson}, Am. J. Math. 118, No. 6, 1249--1275 (1996; Zbl 0865.58047)]. In order to show this, the authors use the fact from [loc. cit.] that when the mean curvature of a regular Riemannian foliation is basic, both the differential and the Laplacian on functions commute locally with averaging. Using this fact on the regular stratum of the SRF, and using regularity properties of the Laplacian, they are able to boot-strap the arguments to obtain smoothness results on the entire SRF. The results in this carefully and concisely written paper should be useful to researchers who study the geometry and analysis of singular Riemannian foliations.