Given a compact manifold and a transversely
orientable codimension-one foliation
on
which is tangent to
, the pair
is called a generalized Reeb component if the holonomy
groups of all leaves in the interior
are trivial and if all leaves of
are proper. Generalized Reeb components
are obvious generalizations of Reeb components.
The introduction of the generalized version of the Reeb component facilitates the proof of many significant results in the theory of 3-manifolds and of foliations.
It is well-known that generalized Reeb components are transversely orientable and
that a manifold admitting a generalized Reeb component also admits a nice
vector field
(Imanishi and Yagi 1976). Moreover, given a generalized Reeb
component
,
is a fibration over
.
Like many notions in geometric topology, the generalized Reeb component can be presented in various contexts. One source describes a generalized
Reeb component on a closed 3-manifold with foliation
to be a submanifold
of maximal dimension
which is bounded by tori
such that the orientation of these tori as
leaves of
is the same as (or simultaneously opposite to) their orientation as the boundary
components of
(Eliashberg and Thurston 1998). Framed in this way, generalized
Reeb components are shown to have deep connections to various notions in foliation
theory, e.g., in presenting an existence criterion for a closed 3-manifold
to admit a taut foliation.