Foliations
This page has not been refereed. The information given here might be incomplete or provisional. |
Contents |
1 Introduction














The leaves of are the immersed submanifolds
. Each
belongs to a unique leaf. The foliation
determines its tangential plane field
by
if
.


A smooth foliation is said to be transversely orientable if
everywhere.
If is a smooth, transversely orientable codimension
foliation and
its tangential plane field, then there is a nonsingular
-form
such that, for each
,

This implies that for some
.
The space of leaves is with the quotient topology, where
if and only if
and
belong to the same leaf of
.
2 Construction and examples
2.1 Bundles
The most trivial examples of foliations are products , foliated by the leaves
. (Another foliation of
is given by
.)
A more general class are flat -bundles with
or
for a (smooth) manifold
. Given a representation
, the flat
-bundle with monodromy
is given as
, where
acts on the universal cober
by deck transformations and on
by means of the representation
. (
is a flat
-bundle if
.)





![\displaystyle \begin{xy} \xymatrix{ \pi^{-1}\left(U\right)\ar[d]^\pi\ar[r]^\phi &U\times F\ar[d]^{p_1}\\ U\ar[r]^{id}&U} \end{xy}](/images/math/7/2/5/72500c17d10d6bf99f9c071ac752f9d6.png)
The fiber bundle yields a foliation by fibers . Its space of leaves
is (diffeomeorphic) homeomorphic to
, in particular
is a Hausdorff manifold.
2.2 Suspensions

where is the canonical projection. This foliation is called the suspension of the representation
.
In particular, if and
is a homeomorphism of
, then the suspension foliation of
is defined to be the suspension foliation of the representation
given by
. Its space of leaves is
, where
if
for some
.
The simplest examples of suspensions are the Kronecker foliations of the 2-torus, that is the suspension foliation of the rotation
by angle
.
If
is a rational multiple of
, then the leaves of
are compact. If
is an irrational multiple of
, then the leaves of
are dense on the 2-torus.
2.3 Submersions



An example of a submersion, which is not a fiber bundle, is given by
![\displaystyle f:\left[-1,1\right]\times {\mathbb R}\rightarrow{\mathbb R}](/images/math/0/5/2/052fdc10e3d29facd86cb6b6e41e53de.png)

![\left[-1,1\right]\times{\mathbb R}](/images/math/5/e/0/5e00477f106f9f9bfc1dcd3bfb0c4693.png)



for . The induced foliations of
are called the 2-dimensional Reeb foliation (of the annulus) resp. the 2-dimensional nonorientable Reeb foliaton (of the Möbius band). Their leaf spaces are not Hausdorff.
2.4 Reeb foliations


![\left(r,\theta\right)\in \left[0,1\right]\times S^{n-1}](/images/math/3/c/b/3cb41268dbbd7e42abfb3366f15c615a.png)




for . The induced foliation of
is called the n-dimensional Reeb foliation. Its leaf space is not Hausdorff.
2.5 Taut foliations
A codimension one foliation of
is taut if for every leaf
of
there is a circle transverse to
which intersects
.
Theorem 2.1 (Rummler, Sullivan).
The following conditions are equivalent for transversely orientable codimension one foliations of closed, orientable, smooth manifolds
:
a) is taut;
b) there is a flow transverse to which preserves some volume form on
;


2.6 Constructing new foliations from old ones
2.6.1 Pullbacks








[Candel&Conlon2000], Theorem 3.2.2
2.6.2 Glueing
Let and
be
-manifolds with foliations of the same codimension. Assume there is a homeomorphism
.
If either both foliations are tangent or both foliations are transverse to the boundaries of
and
, then they can be glued to a foliation on
. This is called the tangential resp. the transversal glueing of
and
.
2.6.3 Turbulization
Let be a transversely orientable codimension 1 foliation, and let
be an embedding transverse to
.
Define a foliation on a small neighborhood
by

![\left(t,r,\theta\right)\in S^1\times \left[0,1\right]\times S^{n-2}\rightarrow S^1\times D^{n-1}](/images/math/3/f/b/3fbf98245ae610938482eae5495cd808.png)
![\lambda:\left[0,1\right]\rightarrow\left[-\frac{\pi}{2},\frac{\pi}{2}\right]](/images/math/8/c/b/8cb553a8127f8d2b0f60d91295f357f5.png)
![\displaystyle \lambda\left(0\right)=-\frac{\pi}{2}, \lambda\mid_{\left[1-\epsilon,1\right]}\equiv \frac{\pi}{2}\mbox{\ for\ some\ }\epsilon>0, \lambda^\prime\left(t\right)>0\mbox{\ for\ all\ }t\in\left(0,1-\epsilon\right), \lambda^{\left(k\right)}\left(0\right)=0\mbox{\ for\ all\ }k\ge 1.](/images/math/a/1/d/a1ddc238831322e1d4b47eccae92edd7.png)
The foliations and
agree on a neighborhood of the boundary of
. The result of glueing these foliations is called the turbulization
of
.
3 Invariants
3.1 Holonomy
Let be a foliation and
a leaf. For a path
contained in the intersection of the leaf
with







The composition yields a well-defined map from the germ of
at
to the germ of
at
, the so-called holonomy transport. The holonomy transport only depends on the relative homotopy class of
.
Lemma 3.1.
Let






Corollary 3.2 (Reeb).
Let be a transversely orientable codimension one foliation of a 3-manifold such that some leaf
is homeomorphic to
. Then
and
is the product foliation by spheres.
[Calegari2007] Theorem 4.5
3.2 Godbillon-Vey invariant
If is a smooth, transversely orientable codimension
foliation of a manifold
, then its tangential plane field
is defined by a nonsingular
-form
and
for some
. The Godbillon-Vey invariant of
is defined as
![\displaystyle gv\left({\mathcal{F}}\right):=\left[\eta\wedge\left(d\eta\right)^q\right]\in H^{2q+1}_{dR}\left(M\right).](/images/math/3/b/2/3b2c7cfde68606b7d423ffdf55998ae0.png)
The Godbillion-Vey invariant is related to resilience of leaves. A leaf is said to be resilient if it is not properly embedded and its holonomy is not trivial.
Theorem 3.3 (Duminy).
If is a foliation of codimension one and no leaf is resilient, then
.
4 Classification
4.1 Codimension one foliations
4.1.1 Existence
Theorem 4.1.
A closed smooth manifold has a smooth codimension one foliation if and only if
, where
denotes the Euler characteristic.




4.1.2 Foliations of surfaces
If is a codimension one foliation of the plane
, then its space of leaves is a (possibly non-Hausdorff) simply connected 1-manifold
. This provides a 1-1-correspondence between foliations of
and simply connected 1-manifolds.
Codimension one foliations on compact surfaces exist only if
, that is on the Torus, the Klein bottle, the annulus and the Möbius band.
A foliation is said to contain a Reeb component resp. a non-orientable Reeb component if the restriction of
to some subsurface
is a Reeb foliation resp. a non-orientable Reeb foliation. (This implies that
is an annulus resp. a Möbius band.)
Theorem 4.2.
a) Let be a foliated torus or Klein bottle. Then we have one of the two exclusive situations:
(1) is the suspension of a homeomorphism
or
(2) contains a Reeb component (orientable or not).
b) Every foliation of the annulus tangent to the boundary is obtained by glueing together a finite number of Reeb components and a finite number of suspensions
c) Every foliation of the Möbius band tangent to the boundary is one of the following three possibly glued together with a foliation on :
(1) the non-orientable Reeb component
(2) the orientable Reeb component identified on one boundary circle by means of a fixed point free involution
(3) the suspension of an orientation-reversing homeomorpism
[Hector&Hirsch1981], Theorem 4.2.15 and Proposition 4.3.2
4.1.3 Foliations of 3-manifolds





[Calegari2007] Theorem 4.37
A taut foliation has no Reeb component. If is an atoroidal 3-manifold, then, conversely, every foliation without Reeb components is taut.









[Calegari2007] Theorem 4.38
In particular, a taut foliation of a 3-manifold yields an action of
on a (possibly non-Hausdorff) simply connected 1-manifold
, the space of leaves of
.
Theorem 4.5 (Gabai). Let be a closed, irreducible 3-manifold.
a) If , then
admits a taut foliation.

![\left[S\right]\in H_2\left(M;{\mathbb R}\right)](/images/math/8/7/5/875ecfe79ac320198542724d4cacb126.png)


1 Codimension two foliations
1.1
-foliations of 3-manifolds
Example 4.7.
a) For every rational number there exists a foliaton of
by circles such that restriction to the standard embedded torus is a rational foliation of slope
.





2 Further discussion
...
5 References
- [Calegari2007] D. Calegari, Foliations and the geometry of 3-manifolds., Oxford Mathematical Monographs; Oxford Science Publications. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. MR2327361 (2008k:57048) Zbl 1118.57002
- [Candel&Conlon2000] A. Candel and L. Conlon, Foliations. I, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2000. MR1732868 (2002f:57058) Zbl 0936.57001
- [Hector&Hirsch1981] G. Hector and U. Hirsch, Introduction to the geometry of foliations. Part A, Friedr. Vieweg \& Sohn, Braunschweig, 1981. MR639738 (83d:57019) Zbl 0628.57001
- [Thurston1976] W. P. Thurston, Existence of codimension-one foliations, Ann. of Math. (2) 104 (1976), no.2, 249–268. MR0425985 (54 #13934) Zbl 0347.57014
This page has not been refereed. The information given here might be incomplete or provisional. |