Geodesic foliations of locally symmetric manifolds (Q676980)

Let \(V\) be a locally symmetric manifold of negative curvature and \(\mathcal F\), \(0 < \dim\mathcal F < \dim V\), a totally geodesic foliation of an open subset \(U\) of \(V\) with relatively complete leaves; that is, any Cauchy sequence of points of a leaf convergent in \(V\) converges in the leaf, too. (Such an \(\mathcal F\) is called a local foliation here.) The main results read as follows. (1) If \(V\) has finite volume, then almost all geodesics on almost all leaves of \(\mathcal F\) are incomplete. (2) If \(V\) is complete of finite volume, \(V\) admits no totally geodesic locally Lipschitz local foliations. (3) If \(V\) is complete and \(\mathcal F\) is C\(^1\)-differentiable, then the growth of \(V\) cannot be dominated by the growth of a generic leaf of \(\mathcal F\). (4) If \(V\) has constant negative curvature and the growth of \(V\) is dominated by \(\exp (nr)\), then \(V\) admits no totally geodesic local C\(^1\)-foliations of dimension \(n+1\). A non-existence result for totally geodesic global foliations of spaces of non-positive curvature is also obtained.