Topology of Foliations and Decomposition of Stochastic Flows of Diffeomorphisms

Abstract

Let M be a compact manifold equipped with a pair of complementary foliations, say horizontal and vertical. In Catuogno et al. (Stoch Dyn 13(4):1350009, 2013) it is shown that, up to a stopping time $$\tau $$ , a stochastic flow of local diffeomorphisms $$\varphi _t$$ in M can be written as a Markovian process in the subgroup of diffeomorphisms which preserve the horizontal foliation composed with a process in the subgroup of diffeomorphisms which preserve the vertical foliation. Here, we discuss topological aspects of this decomposition. The main result guarantees the global decomposition of a flow if it preserves the orientation of a transversely orientable foliation. In the last section, we present an Ito-Liouville formula for subdeterminants of linearised flows. We use this formula to obtain sufficient conditions for the existence of the decomposition for all $$t\ge 0$$ .