CMC foliations of closed manifolds

Minimal surfaces in differential geometry, surfaces with prescribed mean curvature (53A10) Foliations (differential geometric aspects) (53C12) Differential geometry of immersions (minimal, prescribed curvature, tight, etc.) (53C42) Foliations in differential topology; geometric theory (57R30)

Abstract: We prove that every closed, smooth

n

-manifold

X

admits a Riemannian metric together with a smooth, transversely oriented CMC foliation if and only if its Euler characteristic is zero, where by CMC foliation we mean a codimension-one, transversely oriented foliation with leaves of constant mean curvature and where the value of the constant mean curvature can vary from leaf to leaf. Furthermore, we prove that this CMC foliation of

X

can be chosen so that the constant values of the mean curvatures of its leaves change sign. We also prove a general structure theorem for any such non-minimal CMC foliation of

X

that describes relationships between the geometry and topology of the leaves, including the property that there exist compact leaves for every attained value of the mean curvature.

Review text

The authors prove that any closed manifold \(M\) of Euler characteristic zero admits a pair \((\mathcal F, g)\) which consists of a codimension-one foliation \(\mathcal F\) and a Riemannian metric \(g\) such that all the leaves of \(\mathcal F\) have constant mean curvature on the Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\). The proof depends on the results of \textit{G.-I. Oshikiri} [Tohoku Math. J. (2) 49, No. 4, 557--563 (1997; Zbl 0901.53018)], who characterized all the functions on a given foliated manifold \((M,\mathcal F)\) which can arise as mean curvatures of the leaves of \(\mathcal F\) w.r.t. some Riemannian metric on \(M\). The construction of the required foliations \(\mathcal F\) involves a procedure called \textit{turbularization} by the authors and \textit{turbulization} by others (see, for example, [\textit{A. Candel} and \textit{L. Conlon}, Foliations I. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (2000; Zbl 0936.57001)]).

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