Sharp H\"older Regularity for Nirenberg's Complex Frobenius Theorem

Abstract

Nirenberg's famous complex Frobenius theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions on a locally integrable structure for when the manifold is locally diffeomorphic to $\mathbb R^r\times\mathbb C^m\times \mathbb R^{N-r-2m}$ through a coordinate chart $F$ in such a way that the structure is locally spanned by $F^*\frac\partial{\partial t^1},\dots,F^*\frac\partial{\partial t^r},F^*\frac\partial{\partial z^1},\dots,F^*\frac\partial{\partial z^m}$, where we have given $\mathbb R^r\times\mathbb C^m \times\mathbb R^{N-r-2m}$ coordinates $(t,z,s)$. In this paper, we give the optimal H\"older-Zygmund regularity for the coordinate charts which achieve this realization. Namely, if the structure has H\"older-Zygmund regularity of order $\alpha>1$, then the coordinate chart $F$ that maps to $\mathbb R^r\times\mathbb C^m \times\mathbb R^{N-r-2m}$ may be taken to have H\"older-Zygmund regularity of order $\alpha$, and this is sharp. Furthermore, we can choose this $F$ in such a way that the vector fields $F^*\frac\partial{\partial t^1},\dots,F^*\frac\partial{\partial t^r},F^*\frac\partial{\partial z^1},\dots,F^*\frac\partial{\partial z^m}$ on the original manifold have H\"older-Zygmund regularity of order $\alpha-\varepsilon$ for every $\varepsilon>0$, and we give an example to show that the regularity for $F^*\frac\partial{\partial z}$ is optimal.