Regular Leaves of Singular Foliations

Abstract

We identify a class of singular algebraic foliations whose leaves through singular points retain regularity. The proof consists in showing existence of residual gerbes for certain formal stacks, which do not enjoy smooth presentations. As applications, we extend a theorem of Cerveau to the case where the ambient scheme is not smooth and we give a proof of the Zariski--Lipman conjecture for varieties with terminal singularities, which does not rely on existence of resolution of singularities.