Non-unimodular transversely homogeneous foliations (Q2073618)

In the article under review, the authors study the tautness of transversely homogeneous foliations. A foliation on a manifold \(M\) is called taut if every leaf is a minimal immersed submanifold for some Riemannian metric on \(M\). This property has been studied by Sullivan, Haefliger and many other authors (see, for example, [\textit{P. Tondeur}, Geometry of foliations. Basel: Birkhäuser (1997; Zbl 0905.53002)]). A codimension \(q\) foliation is called unimodular if the basic cohomology of degree \(q\) is nontrivial. It is remarkable that, by a theorem of \textit{X. Masa} [Comment. Math. Helv. 67, No. 1, 17--27 (1992; Zbl 0778.53029)], the tautness of transversely orientable Riemannian foliations is characterized by the unimodularity, which is a topological property of Riemannian foliations. In this article, the authors give sufficient or necessary conditions for transversely homogeneous foliations to be unimodular or non-unimodular. A foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) is called transversely homogeneous if its holonomy pseudogroup is generated by the left action of a subgroup \(\Gamma\) of a Lie group \(G\) on a homogeneous space \(G/K\). Let \((M,\mathcal{F})\) be a compact manifold with a transversely homogeneous foliation modeled in this way with \(G\) and \(G/K\). For simplicity, let us restrict ourselves to the case where the left \(G\)-action on \(G/K\) is effective, while the authors obtain their results in the general case. Assume that \(K\) is compact, which implies that \(\mathcal{F}\) is Riemannian. Assume further that \(G\) is connected and the fibers of the developing map have finitely many connected components. Under these hypotheses, the authors prove the following: The first result asserts that if both \(G\) and the closure of \(\Gamma\) are unimodular and the adjoint action of \(K\) is trivial, then the foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) is unimodular. This result is a generalization of a result of \textit{A. El Kacimi-Alaoui} and \textit{M. Nicolau} for Lie foliations [Indag. Math., New Ser. 1, No. 3, 323--333 (1990; Zbl 0712.53016)]. The main result asserts that, if the adjoint action of \(K\) is trivial, then the non-unimodularity of \(\mathcal{F}\) implies that either the ambient manifold \(M\), the closure of any leaf or the total space of the Blumenthal bundle fibers over \(S^1\). (The Blumenthal bundle is a \(G/K\)-bundle over \(M\) associated to a flat \(G\)-bundle, which is naturally obtained from the transversely homogeneous foliation.) The proof uses Tischler's theorem for non-singular closed \(1\)-forms.