Tautness for Riemannian foliations on non-compact manifolds (Q930582)

The authors introduce the notion of a compactly embeddable riemannian foliation (CERF) as a foliation that can be embedded as the regular stratum of a singular riemannian foliation of a connected compact manifold. Of course, every regular riemannian foliation of a compact manifold is a CERF, but there are foliations of noncompact manifolds that are CERFs as well. The mean curvature form of a regular riemannian foliation of a compact manifold defines a basic cohomology class that provides an obstruction for the tautness of the foliation. (See [\textit{J. A. Álvarez López}, Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 10, No.2, 179-194 (1992; Zbl 0759.57017)]). This tautness class generally does not exist in the noncompact case. However, in this paper, the authors construct a cohomology class for CERFs that plays a role similar to the tautness class.