Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can us;; Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "experimental mathematics," "CFD," "completely integrable systems," "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order," which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics."

Finsler geometry is the most natural generalization of Riemannian geo- metry. It started in 1918 when P. Finsler [1] wrote his thesis on curves and surfaces in what he called generalized metric spaces. Studying the geometry of those spaces (which where named Finsler spaces or Finsler manifolds) became an area of active research. Many important results on the subject have been brought together in several monographs (cf. , H. Rund [3], G. Asanov [1], M. Matsumoto [6], A. Bejancu [8], P. L. Antonelli, R. S. Ingar- den and M. Matsumoto [1], M. Abate and G. Patrizio [1] and R. Miron [3]) . However, the present book is the first in the literature that is entirely de- voted to studying the geometry of submanifolds of a Finsler manifold. Our exposition is also different in many other respects. For example, we work on pseudo-Finsler manifolds where in general the Finsler metric is only non- degenerate (rather than on the particular case of Finsler manifolds where the metric is positive definite). This is absolutely necessary for physical and biological applications of the subject. Secondly, we combine in our study both the classical coordinate approach and the modern coordinate-free ap- proach. Thirdly, our pseudo-Finsler manifolds F = (M, M', F*) are such that the geometric objects under study are defined on an open submani- fold M' of the tangent bundle T M, where M' need not be equal to the entire TMo = TM\O(M).

This book is about the light like (degenerate) geometry of submanifolds needed to fill a gap in the general theory of submanifolds. The growing importance of light like hypersurfaces in mathematical physics, in particular their extensive use in relativity, and very limited information available on the general theory of lightlike submanifolds, motivated the present authors, in 1990, to do collaborative research on the subject matter of this book. Based on a series of author's papers (Bejancu [3], Bejancu-Duggal [1,3], Dug gal [13], Duggal-Bejancu [1,2,3]) and several other researchers, this volume was conceived and developed during the Fall '91 and Fall '94 visits of Bejancu to the University of Windsor, Canada. The primary difference between the lightlike submanifold and that of its non degenerate counterpart arises due to the fact that in the first case, the normal vector bundle intersects with the tangent bundle of the submanifold. Thus, one fails to use, in the usual way, the theory of non-degenerate submanifolds (cf. Chen [1]) to define the induced geometric objects (such as linear connection, second fundamental form, Gauss and Weingarten equations) on the light like submanifold. Some work is known on null hypersurfaces and degenerate submanifolds (see an up-to-date list of references on pages 138 and 140 respectively). Our approach, in this book, has the following outstanding features: (a) It is the first-ever attempt of an up-to-date information on null curves, lightlike hypersur faces and submanifolds, consistent with the theory of non-degenerate submanifolds.

The book is self-contained. It starts with the basic material on distributions and foliations. Then it proceeds to gradually introduce and build the tools needed for studying the geometry of foliated manifolds. The main theme of the book is to investigate the interrelations between foliations of a manifold on one hand, and the many geometric structures that the manifold may admit on the other hand. Among these structures we mention: affine, Riemannian, semi-Riemannian, Finsler, symplectic, complex and contact structures. Using these structures, the book presents interesting classes of foliations whose geometry is very rich and promising. These include the classes of: Riemannian, totally geodesic, totally umbilical, minimal, parallel non-degenerate, parallel totally - null, parallel partially - null, symmetric, transversally symmetric, Lagrange, totally real and Legendre foliations. Some of these classes appear for the first time in the literature in a book form. Finally, the vertical foliation of a vector bundle is used to develop a gauge theory on the total space of a vector bundle.

The book will be of interest to graduate students who want to be introduced to the geometry of foliations, to researchers working on foliations and geometric structures, and to physicists interested in gauge theories.

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can us;; Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "experimental mathematics," "CFD," "completely integrable systems," "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order," which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics."

Finsler geometry is the most natural generalization of Riemannian geo- metry. It started in 1918 when P. Finsler [1] wrote his thesis on curves and surfaces in what he called generalized metric spaces. Studying the geometry of those spaces (which where named Finsler spaces or Finsler manifolds) became an area of active research. Many important results on the subject have been brought together in several monographs (cf. , H. Rund [3], G. Asanov [1], M. Matsumoto [6], A. Bejancu [8], P. L. Antonelli, R. S. Ingar- den and M. Matsumoto [1], M. Abate and G. Patrizio [1] and R. Miron [3]) . However, the present book is the first in the literature that is entirely de- voted to studying the geometry of submanifolds of a Finsler manifold. Our exposition is also different in many other respects. For example, we work on pseudo-Finsler manifolds where in general the Finsler metric is only non- degenerate (rather than on the particular case of Finsler manifolds where the metric is positive definite). This is absolutely necessary for physical and biological applications of the subject. Secondly, we combine in our study both the classical coordinate approach and the modern coordinate-free ap- proach. Thirdly, our pseudo-Finsler manifolds F = (M, M', F*) are such that the geometric objects under study are defined on an open submani- fold M' of the tangent bundle T M, where M' need not be equal to the entire TMo = TM\O(M).

This book is about the light like (degenerate) geometry of submanifolds needed to fill a gap in the general theory of submanifolds. The growing importance of light like hypersurfaces in mathematical physics, in particular their extensive use in relativity, and very limited information available on the general theory of lightlike submanifolds, motivated the present authors, in 1990, to do collaborative research on the subject matter of this book. Based on a series of author's papers (Bejancu [3], Bejancu-Duggal [1,3], Dug gal [13], Duggal-Bejancu [1,2,3]) and several other researchers, this volume was conceived and developed during the Fall '91 and Fall '94 visits of Bejancu to the University of Windsor, Canada. The primary difference between the lightlike submanifold and that of its non degenerate counterpart arises due to the fact that in the first case, the normal vector bundle intersects with the tangent bundle of the submanifold. Thus, one fails to use, in the usual way, the theory of non-degenerate submanifolds (cf. Chen [1]) to define the induced geometric objects (such as linear connection, second fundamental form, Gauss and Weingarten equations) on the light like submanifold. Some work is known on null hypersurfaces and degenerate submanifolds (see an up-to-date list of references on pages 138 and 140 respectively). Our approach, in this book, has the following outstanding features: (a) It is the first-ever attempt of an up-to-date information on null curves, lightlike hypersur faces and submanifolds, consistent with the theory of non-degenerate submanifolds.

The theory of foliations of manifolds was created in the forties of the last century by Ch. Ehresmann and G. Reeb [ER44]. Since then, the subject has enjoyed a rapid development and thousands of papers investigating foliations have appeared. A list of papers and preprints on foliations up to 1995 can be found in Tondeur [Ton97]. Due to the great interest of topologists and geometers in this rapidly ev- ving theory, many books on foliations have also been published one after the other. We mention, for example, the books written by: I. Tamura [Tam76], G. Hector and U. Hirsch [HH83], B. Reinhart [Rei83], C. Camacho and A.L. Neto [CN85], H. Kitahara [Kit86], P. Molino [Mol88], Ph. Tondeur [Ton88], [Ton97], V. Rovenskii [Rov98], A. Candel and L. Conlon [CC03]. Also, the survey written by H.B. Lawson, Jr. [Law74] had a great impact on the de- lopment of the theory of foliations. So it is natural to ask: why write yet another book on foliations? The answerisverysimple.Ourareasofinterestandinvestigationaredi?erent.The main theme of this book is to investigate the interrelations between foliations of a manifold on one hand, and the many geometric structures that the ma- foldmayadmitontheotherhand. Amongthesestructureswemention:a?ne, Riemannian, semi-Riemannian, Finsler, symplectic, and contact structures.