Minicourse: Topology of foliations and laminations

Speaker: Gilbert Hector (Institut C. Jordan, Université Lyon 1)

Abstract: I will give a concrete and intuitive introduction to the theory of foliations, illustrating every concept and result with adapted examples. The course will consist of the following parts (time permitting):
(A) Fundamentals:
- Definitions, examples and constructions.
- Description of the transverse structure. The holonomy pseudogroup and its associated Schreier continuum.
- Holonomy groups of individual leaves and transversal holonomy. Genericity of leaves with trivial holonomy (Epstein et al., Hector).
- Transverse invariant measures, construction by Folner sequences. The theorem of Plante.
(B) Codimension one foliations of simply connected manifolds: 
- Null homotopic closed transversals versus non analytic holonomy. Haefliger’s non existence theorem of analytic foliations on spheres.
- Vanishing cycles and Novikov’s theorem for the existence of Reeb components on 3-manifolds with finite fundamental group.
- Foliations of the Euclidean spaces (Hector) and the spheres (Lawson).
(C) Miscellaneous:
- Generic properties of leaves (following Ghys, Cantwell-Conlon and Blanc).
- Structure of Riemannian foliations according to Molino.
- Aspects of the theoy of matchbox manifolds.

idate: 
Monday, 22 April, 2013
edate: 
Thursday, 25 April, 2013
Place: 
Aula Gris 1, ICMAT, Campus de Cantoblanco (Madrid)
Time: 
15:30-16:30
Category: 
Courses