On deformations of coisotropic submanifolds with fixed characteristic foliation

Abstract

It is well-known that the deformation problem of a compact coisotropic submanifold C in a symplectic manifold is obstructed in general. We show that it becomes unobstructed if one only allows coisotropic deformations whose characteristic foliation is diffeomorphic to that of C. This extends an unobstructedness result in the setting of integral coisotropic submanifolds due to Ruan.