Foliation with isometric leaves.

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of foliations in differential geometry, specifically focusing on foliations of a manifold with codimension one leaves that are isometric. Participants explore the terminology associated with such foliations and their implications, particularly in the context of General Relativity.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Technical explanation, Conceptual clarification, Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant inquires about the specific term for a foliation of a manifold with isometric leaves, noting that they found "quasi-isometric foliations" but do not believe it aligns with their definition.
  • Another participant suggests that the inquiry may lack responses due to insufficient information and requests additional details or findings.
  • A third participant relates the concept to General Relativity, explaining that if hypersurfaces are isometric and space-like, a global time coordinate can be defined, leading to the concept of Cauchy surfaces and globally hyperbolic space-times.
  • A fourth participant discusses two interpretations of isometric foliations: one as a foliation of a manifold into mutually isometric leaves, and another involving two (pseudo-)Riemannian manifolds with an isometry between their leaves. They express uncertainty about existing terminology and suggest that "isometric foliation" may not be the best choice.
  • This participant also proposes that defining one's own terminology might be a viable approach if existing terms are inadequate.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the terminology for foliations with isometric leaves, and multiple interpretations and uncertainties about the definitions remain evident throughout the discussion.

Contextual Notes

There are limitations regarding the clarity of definitions and the potential overlap between different concepts in differential geometry and General Relativity. The discussion reflects a lack of established terminology for the specific type of foliation being discussed.

center o bass
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Suppose one has a foliation of a manifold ##M## with codimension one leaves that are all isometric. What is such a foliation called?

All I have been able to find online is something called quasi-isometric foliations, which does not seem to coincide with my definition above.
 
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I'm sorry you are not generating any responses at the moment. Is there any additional information you can share with us? Any new findings?
 
I only know this from the context of General Relativity. If the hypersurfaces are isometric to each other, and are space like, this means one can define a global time coordinate on such hypersurfaces. The integral curves of the velocity vector of this global time coordinate can be used to define the isometry (maybe diffeomorphism in GR) between different hypersurfaces. Such surfaces are then called Cauchy surfaces, and the space-time is said to be globally hyperbolic.

Probably this is not what you wanted...but it's all I can think of.
 
I don't know whether there already is a word, but if you were to approach me on the street and start talking to me about isometric foliations, there's two things I would have in mind. The first one is what you described, that is a foliation of a manifold into mutually isometric leaves. The next one would be two (pseudo-)Riemannian manifolds ##(M,g),(M',g')## that are foliated and there exists an isometry between the leaves of the two with respect to the pullback metric. With respect to this metric, the leaves are assumed to be pseudo-Riemannian as well. Note that this neither implies that ##(M,g)## and ##(M',g')## are isometric, nor that the leaves are mutually isometric. Actually, the more I think about this, the more it appears that the latter is best described by the word "isometric foliation".
It follows that this would be a bad choice of terminology. However, both foliations and metrics are omnipresent in differential geometry, so there's probably a word... I spent some time looking but I really couldn't find anything.
To be safe I would simply stick to "a foliation with isometric leaves" or define your own terminology.
 

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