Foliation de Rham cohomology of generic Reeb foliations
Abstract
In this paper, we prove that there exists a residual subset of contact forms (if any) on a compact connected orientable manifold for which the foliation de Rham cohomology of the associated Reeb foliation is trivial in that both and are isomorphic to . We also prove the same triviality for a generic choice of contact forms with fixed contact structure . For any choice of from the aforementioned residual subset, this cohomological result can be restated as any of the following two equivalent statements: (1) The functional equation is uniquely solvable (modulo the addition by constant) for any satisfying , or (2) The Lie algebra of the group of strict contactomorphisms is isomorphic to the span of Reeb vector fields, and so isomorphic to the 1 dimensional abelian Lie algebra . This result is also a key ingredient for the proof of the generic scarcity result of strict contactomorphisms by Savelyev and the author.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.16453,
title = {Foliation de Rham cohomology of generic Reeb foliations},
author = {Yong-Geun Oh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.16453},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
37 pages, comments welcome! v2) 55 pages, the case with fixed contact structure added, new perspective on contact dynamics added, exposition much improved