On submanifolds whose tubular hypersurfaces have constant mean curvatures

Motivated by the theory of isoparametric hypersurfaces, we study submanifolds whose tubular hypersurfaces have some constant "higher order mean curvatures". Here a $k$-th order mean curvature $Q_k$ ($k\geq1$) of a hypersurface $M^n$ is defined as the $k$-th power sum of the principal curvatures, or equivalently, of the shape operator. Many necessary restrictions involving principal curvatures, higher order mean curvatures and Jacobi operators on such submanifolds are obtained, which, among other things, generalize some classical results in the theory of isoparametric hypersurfaces given by E. Cartan, K. Nomizu, H. F. M{\"u}nzner, Q. M. Wang, \emph{etc.}. As an application, we finally get a geometrical filtration for the focal varieties of isoparametric functions on a complete Riemannian manifold.Comment: 29 page

Differentiable classification of 4-manifolds with singular Riemannian foliations

In this paper, we first prove that any closed simply connected 4-manifold that admits a decomposition into two disk bundles of rank greater than 1 is diffeomorphic to one of the standard elliptic 4-manifolds: $\mathbb{S}^4$, $\mathbb{CP}^2$, $\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{S}^2$, or $\mathbb{CP}^2\#\pm \mathbb{CP}^2$. As an application we prove that any closed simply connected 4-manifold admitting a nontrivial singular Riemannian foliation is diffeomorphic to a connected sum of copies of standard $\mathbb{S}^4$, $\pm\mathbb{CP}^2$ and $\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{S}^2$. A classification of singular Riemannian foliations of codimension 1 on all closed simply connected 4-manifolds is obtained as a byproduct. In particular, there are exactly 3 non-homogeneous singular Riemannian foliations of codimension 1, complementing the list of cohomogeneity one 4-manifolds.Comment: 24 pages, final version, to appear in Math. An