Alberto Candel

This book provides a detailed introduction to the coarse quasi-isometry of leaves of a foliated space and describes the cases where the generic leaves have the same quasi-isometric invariants. Every leaf of a compact foliated space has an induced coarse quasi-isometry type, represented by the coarse metric defined by the length of plaque chains given by any finite foliated atlas. When there are dense leaves either all dense leaves without holonomy are uniformly coarsely quasi-isometric to each other, or else every leaf is coarsely quasi-isometric to just meagerly many other leaves. Moreover, if all leaves are dense, the first alternative is characterized by a condition on the leaves called coarse quasi-symmetry. Similar results are proved for more specific coarse invariants, like growth type, asymptotic dimension, and amenability. The Higson corona of the leaves is also studied. All the results are richly illustrated with examples. The book is primarily aimed at researchers on foliated spaces. More generally, specialists in geometric analysis, topological dynamics, or metric geometry may also benefit from it.

This is the second of two volumes on the qualitative theory of foliations. For this volume, the authors have selected three special topics: analysis on foliated spaces, characteristic classes of foliations, and foliated manifolds. Each of these is an example of deep interaction between foliation theory and some other highly-developed area of mathematics. In all cases, the authors present useful, in-depth introductions, which lead to further study using the extensive available literature. This comprehensive volume has something to offer a broad spectrum of readers: from beginners to advanced students to professional researchers. It contains exercises and many illustrations. The book would make an elegant supplementary text for a topics course at the advanced graduate level. "Foliations I" is Volume 23 in the AMS series, "Graduate Studies in Mathematics".