The first cohomology group of leaves and local stability of compact foliations

Abstract

A foliation with all leaves compact (compact foliation) is called locally stable if every leaf has a basis of neighborhoods which are unions of leaves. We study the relationship between the first real cohomology group of leaves and the local stability of compact foliations. We show by example that the topology of the typical leaves (i.e. leaves with zero holonomy) has no influence on the local stability of the foliation while — at least for small codimensions — (less than 4 in general or less than 5 for foliations on compact minifolds) — a locally unstable foliation has a leaf F with infinite holonomy and a finite covering F' of F such that H1(F'; IR) ≠ O. We also prove a related structural stability result for fibre bundles.