Totally geodesic foliations with nearly-integrable orthogonal distribution (Q808438)

Let M be a manifold equipped with the structure of a totally geodesic foliation having normal bundle close to an integrable one. The author investigates the conditions under which such a manifold admits a metric decomposition. Let \(M^{n+\nu}\) be a Riemannian manifold with a \(\nu\)- dimensional foliation \(\{\) \(L\}\) and TL \((TL^{\perp})\) the tangent (normal) bundle of L. The integrability of \(TL^{\perp}\) is equivalent to \([y,z]^{\top}=0 (y,z\in TL^{\perp})\), where T is the TL-component. Let \(Ric^{\perp}=Ric_ M-Ric_ L\) and \(\rho\) (n)-1 be the maximal number of continuous linearly independent vector fields on the sphere \(S^{n-1}\). If \[ | [y,z]^ T_ p|^ 2\leq (4/n) Ric^{\perp}(x,x)(y,z\in TL^{\perp},\quad x\in T_ pL,\quad | x| =| y| =| z| =1,\quad p\in M) \] and \(\nu >\rho (n)\) then \(M^{n+\nu}\) is locally isometric to \(L^{\nu}\times D^ n\). This result applies to the situation when \(M^{\ell}\subset \bar M\) is a complete analytic parabolic submanifold, invariant under the curvature tensor of the Riemannian manifold \(\bar M.\)