Fibrations of \(\mathbb{R}^3\) by oriented lines (Q2059703)

A fibration of \(\mathbb{R}^3\) by oriented lines is given by a vector field \(V\colon\mathbb{R}^3\to S^2\) for which all of the integral curves are oriented lines. It is called skew if no two fibers are parallel. In earlier work, several questions have been answered for skew fibrations, namely which subsets of \(S^2\) can occur as images of \(V\), and how do fibrations behave at infinity. Two other questions, namely what possible subsets of \(\mathbb{R}^3\) could serve as the preimage \(V^{-1}(u)\) of any given fiber direction \(u\), and whether the image of \(V\) may contain antipodal points, are trivially (by definition) answered for skew fibrations. The main result of the paper under review is a partial answer to these four questions for the general case and a structural classification for a large class of nonskew fibrations. For \(u\in S^2\) denote \(S_u=u^\perp\cap V^{-1}(u)\). The results are the following. If the fibration is not obtained by individually fibering the leaves of a foliation by parallel planes, then \(S_u\) is convex and thus connected. If \(S_u\) is compact, then the antipodal point \(-u\) does not belong to the image of \(V\) and continuity at infinity holds for the direction \(u\). If \(S_u\) is compact for all \(u\), then the image of \(V\) is a compact subset of \(S^2\). If \(S_u\) is non-compact for all \(u\), then every \(S_u\) is a union of lines and thus the fibration is obtained by individually fibering the leaves of a foliation by parallel planes.