No label defined (Q4409979)

In the past decade we observed a renaissance of the Ljusternik-Schnirelman (in future LS) theory. As usual, progress in theory leads to new applications, and one of such applications is the LS theory for foliations (invented by the first author in her thesis). Given a foliation \({\mathcal F}\) on a manifold \(M\), an open subset of \(M\) is called tangentially categorical if the inclusion map \((U, {\mathcal F}|U) \to (M,{\mathcal F})\) is homotopic (through foliated maps) to a foliated map \(U \to M\) which is constant at each leaf of \({\mathcal F}\). The tangential category \({\text{cat}}_{\mathcal F}M\) is the minimum number of tangentially categorical subsets of \(M\) which one needs to cover \(M\). It is known that \({\text{cat}}_{\mathcal F}M \geq {\text{cat}} L\) for all leaves \(L\) of \({\mathcal F}\) and that \({\text{cat}}_{\mathcal F}M \geq {\text nil} H^+_{\mathcal F}(M)\), where nil is the nilpotence degree and \(H^+_{\mathcal F}(M)\) denote the positive degree foliation homology, see \textit{H. Colman} and \textit{E. Macias-Virgós} [J. London. Math. Soc., II Ser. 65, 745-756 (2002; Zbl 1012.55001)]. In the paper under review the authors refine the second estimate by introducing a certain spectral sequence \(E_*^{*,*}\) and proving that \({\text{nil}} E_{\infty}^{*,+}\leq {\text{nil}} E_2^{*,+}\leq {\text{nil}} E_1^{*,+}\leq {\text{cat}}_{\mathcal F}M\) while \({\text{nil}} H^+_{\mathcal F}(M)\leq{\text{nil}} E_1^{*,+}\). As an application, the authors prove the following results: (1) Let \(M\) be a compact manifold and assume that \({\mathcal F}\) is defined by a locally free action \({\mathbb R}^m \times M \to M\). Then \({\text{cat}}_{\mathcal F}M=m+1\). (2) Let \(M\) be a compact \((2n+1)\)-dimensional manifold. If the Godbillon--Vey class of \({\mathcal F}\) is non-zero, then \({\text{cat}}_{\mathcal F}M=n+2\). For the entire collection see [Zbl 1005.00038].