Hyperpolar homogeneous foliations on symmetric spaces of noncompact type (Q531758)

The paper under review provides a complete classification of hyperpolar homogeneous foliations on symmetric spaces of noncompact type. This marks a very important advance in the area of Riemannian foliations, consolidating partial results obtained in the last decades. Recall that a Riemannian foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) on a manifold \(M\) is hyperpolar if it admits a flat section, i.e., a connected closed flat submanifold of \(M\) that intersects each leaf of \(\mathcal{F}\) orthogonally, and is homogeneous if the subgroup of isometries of \(M\) preserving \(\mathcal{F}\) acts transitively on each leaf. The authors prove that all such foliations on a symmetric space of noncompact type \(M\) are obtained from rather elementary foliations on Euclidean spaces and on the hyperbolic spaces \(\mathbb F H^n\) over normed real division algebras \(\mathbb F\). More precisely, an orthogonal subset \(\Phi\) of a set of simple roots associated with \(M\) determines a decomposition \(M=F_\Phi^s\times E^{\text{rank}\,M-|\Phi|}\times N_\Phi\), where \(F_\Phi^s\) is the product of \(|\Phi|\) symmetric spaces of rank one, \(E^n\) is a Euclidean space and \(N_\Phi\) is the horocycle subgroup of the parabolic subgroup of the isometry group of \(M\) determined by \(\Phi\). By a result of the first and the third author [J. Differ. Geom. 63, No.~1, 1--40 (2003; Zbl 1070.53011)], on each symmetric space of rank one in \(F_\Phi^s\) (which is a hyperbolic space \(\mathbb F H^n\)) there exist two isometric congruence classes of homogeneous codimension one foliations, one of which is determined by the horosphere foliation. Denote by \(\mathcal{F}_{\mathbb F}^n\) a representative of the other congruence class. Then the main result of the paper states that every hyperpolar homogeneous foliation on \(M\) is isometrically congruent to a product of codimension-one foliations \(\mathcal{F}_{\mathbb F}^{n}\) in each symmetric space of rank one in \(F_\Phi^s\), a foliation by parallel affine subspaces on the Euclidean space \(E^{\text{rank} M-|\Phi|}\) and \(N_\Phi\). Although the results are deep, the paper is very clear, detailed and well organized, making it more accessible.