Skew flat fibrations (Q907926)

The author studies fibrations of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) by skew oriented copies of \(\mathbb{R}^p\) as well as their complex and quaternionic analogues. Recall that a fibration of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) by oriented copies of \(\mathbb{R}^p\) is called skew or a \((p, n)\)-fibration if no two fibers intersect nor contain parallel directions. The problem has previously been studied by Ovsienko and Tabachnikov, Salvai, Gluck and Warner. Severe restrictions on the existence of such fibrations are proved using methods of algebraic topology. The author proves that the space of fibrations of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) by skew oriented lines deformation retracts to the subspace of Hopf fibrations, and therefore has the homotopy type of a pair of disjoint copies of \(S^2\). The geometry and topology of \((p, n)\)-fibrations are nicely explained in the paper.