DEFORMATIONS OF LEVI FLAT STRUCTURES IN SMOOTH MANIFOLDS

Abstract

We study intrinsic deformations of Levi flat structures on a smooth manifold. A Levi flat structure on a smooth manifold L is a couple (ξ, J) where ξ ⊂ T(L) is an integrable distribution of codimension 1 and J : ξ → ξ is a bundle automorphism which defines a complex integrable structure on each leaf. A deformation of a Levi flat structure (ξ, J) is a smooth family {(ξt, Jt)}t∈]-ε,ε[ of Levi flat structures on L such that (ξ0, J0) = (ξ, J). We define a complex whose cohomology group of order 1 contains the infinitesimal deformations of a Levi flat structure. In the case of real analytic Levi flat structures, this cohomology group is [Formula: see text] where (𝒵*(L), δ, {⋅,⋅}) is the differential graded Lie algebra associated to ξ.