On deformations of coisotropic submanifolds with fixed characteristic foliation

Abstract

It is well-known that the deformation problem of a compact coisotropic submanifold $C$ in a symplectic manifold is obstructed in general. We show that it becomes unobstructed if one only allows coisotropic deformations whose characteristic foliation is diffeomorphic to that of $C$. This extends an unobstructedness result in the setting of integral coisotropic submanifolds due to Ruan.