MINIMALITY OF STRONG STABLE AND UNSTABLE FOLIATIONS FOR PARTIALLY HYPERBOLIC DIFFEOMORPHISMS

We give a topological criterion for the minimality of the strong unstable (or stable) foliation of robustly transitive partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms.As a consequence we prove that, for $3$-manifolds, there is an open and dense subset of robustly transitive diffeomorphisms (far from homoclinic tangencies) such that either the strong stable or the strong unstable foliation is robustly minimal.We also give a topological condition (existence of a central periodic compact leaf) guaranteeing (for an open and dense subset) the simultaneous minimality of the two strong foliations.AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 37D25; 37C70; 37C20; 37C29