Effondrement, spectre et propri\'et\'es diophantiennes des flots riemanniens

Abstract

Let F be a riemannian flow on a closed manifold M. We study the behavior of the first eigenvalues of the Hodge Laplacian acting on differential forms under adiabatic collapsing of the flow. We show that the number of small eigenvalues is related to the basic cohomology of F, and give spectral criteria for the vanishing of the \'Alvarez class and the Euler class of F. We also define a diophantine invariant of the flow wich is related to the asymptotical behavior of the small eigenvalues. An appendix is devoted to arithmetic properties of riemannian flows.