Non-unimodular transversely homogeneous foliations

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Publication:2073618



Abstract: We give sufficient conditions for the tautness of a transversely homogenous foliation defined on a compact manifold, by computing its base-like cohomology. As an application, we prove that if the foliation is non-unimodular then either the ambient manifold, the closure of the leaves or the total space of an associated principal bundle fiber over S1.


In the article under review, the authors study the tautness of transversely homogeneous foliations. A foliation on a manifold \(M\) is called taut if every leaf is a minimal immersed submanifold for some Riemannian metric on \(M\). This property has been studied by Sullivan, Haefliger and many other authors (see, for example, [\textit{P. Tondeur}, Geometry of foliations. Basel: Birkhäuser (1997; Zbl 0905.53002)]). A codimension \(q\) foliation is called unimodular if the basic cohomology of degree \(q\) is nontrivial. It is remarkable that, by a theorem of \textit{X. Masa} [Comment. Math. Helv. 67, No. 1, 17--27 (1992; Zbl 0778.53029)], the tautness of transversely orientable Riemannian foliations is characterized by the unimodularity, which is a topological property of Riemannian foliations. In this article, the authors give sufficient or necessary conditions for transversely homogeneous foliations to be unimodular or non-unimodular. A foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) is called transversely homogeneous if its holonomy pseudogroup is generated by the left action of a subgroup \(\Gamma\) of a Lie group \(G\) on a homogeneous space \(G/K\). Let \((M,\mathcal{F})\) be a compact manifold with a transversely homogeneous foliation modeled in this way with \(G\) and \(G/K\). For simplicity, let us restrict ourselves to the case where the left \(G\)-action on \(G/K\) is effective, while the authors obtain their results in the general case. Assume that \(K\) is compact, which implies that \(\mathcal{F}\) is Riemannian. Assume further that \(G\) is connected and the fibers of the developing map have finitely many connected components. Under these hypotheses, the authors prove the following: The first result asserts that if both \(G\) and the closure of \(\Gamma\) are unimodular and the adjoint action of \(K\) is trivial, then the foliation \(\mathcal{F}\) is unimodular. This result is a generalization of a result of \textit{A. El Kacimi-Alaoui} and \textit{M. Nicolau} for Lie foliations [Indag. Math., New Ser. 1, No. 3, 323--333 (1990; Zbl 0712.53016)]. The main result asserts that, if the adjoint action of \(K\) is trivial, then the non-unimodularity of \(\mathcal{F}\) implies that either the ambient manifold \(M\), the closure of any leaf or the total space of the Blumenthal bundle fibers over \(S^1\). (The Blumenthal bundle is a \(G/K\)-bundle over \(M\) associated to a flat \(G\)-bundle, which is naturally obtained from the transversely homogeneous foliation.) The proof uses Tischler's theorem for non-singular closed \(1\)-forms.











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