Proofs of conjectures about singular Riemannian foliations (Q2498437)

A singular foliation on a complete Riemannian manifold \(M\) is said to be Riemannian if each geodesic that is perpendicular at one point to a leaf remains perpendicular to every leaf it meets. The authors prove that if the distribution of normal spaces to the regular leaves is integrable, then each leaf of this normal distribution can be extended to be a complete immersed totally geodesic submanifold (called section), which meets every leaf orthogonally. In addition the set of regular points is open and dense in each section. This result generalizes a result of \textit{H. Boualem} [Compos. Math. 95, No. 1, 101--125 (1995; Zbl 0854.53031)] and solves a problem inspired by a remark of \textit{R. S. Palais} and \textit{C. Terng} [Critical point theory and submanifold geometry (1988; Zbl 0658.49001)] and a work of \textit{J. Szenthe} [Period. Math. Hung. 15, 281--299 (1984; Zbl 0583.53035)] about polar actions. The authors also study the singular holonomy of a singular Riemannian foliation with sections (s.r.f.s. for short) and in particular the tranverse orbit of the closure of each leaf. They prove that the closures of the leaves of a s.r.f.s on \(M\) form a partition of \(M\) which is a singular Riemannian foliation. This result proves partially a conjecture of \textit{P. Molino} [Riemannian foliations (1988; Zbl 0633.53001)].