Singular Riemannian foliations are foliation on Riemannian manifolds whose leaves are equidistant. Singular Riemannian foliations on Euclidean spaces (called infinitesimal foliations), are of special importance since they provide the local models for general singular Riemannian foliation around a point, and generalize orthogonal representations up to orbit equivalence. A recent result with A.Lytchak shows that infinitesimal foliations are given by the preimages of some polynomial map. In this talk, we show how this new algebraic structure leads to new algebraic objects, describing the structure of the foliation. In particular, we show how the space of quadratic basic polynomials (i.e. polynomials that are constant on the leaves of the foliation) produces a Jordan algebra which encodes information about the structure of invariant subspaces of the foliation.
Links:
[1] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/taxonomy/term/39
[2] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/3444
[3] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/3050