# Naturality of Flows

This is something I always forget exists and has a name, so I end up reproving it. Since this sequence of posts is a hodge-podge of things to help me take a differential geometry test, hopefully this will lodge the result in my brain and save me time if it comes up.

I’m not sure whether to call it a lemma or not, but the setup is you have a smooth map ${F:M\rightarrow N}$ and a vector field on ${M}$, say ${X}$ and a vector field on ${N}$ say ${Y}$ such that ${X}$ and ${Y}$ are ${F}$-related. Define ${M_t}$ and ${N_t}$ to be the image of flowing for time ${t}$ and let ${\theta}$ and ${\eta}$ be the flows of ${X}$ and ${Y}$ respectively. Then the lemma says for all ${t}$ we have ${F(M_t)\subset N_t}$ and ${\eta_t\circ F=F\circ \theta_t}$ on ${M_t}$.

This is a “naturality” condition because all it really says is that the following diagram commutes:

${\begin{matrix} M_t & \stackrel{F}{\longrightarrow} & N_t \\ \theta_t \downarrow & & \downarrow \eta_t \\ M_{-t} & \stackrel{\longrightarrow}{F} & N_{-t} \end{matrix}}$

Proof: Let ${p\in M}$, then ${F\circ \theta^p: \mathbb{R}\rightarrow N}$ is a curve that satisfies the property $\displaystyle {\frac{d}{dt}\Big|_{t=t_0}(F\circ \theta^p)(t)=DF_{\theta^p(t_0)}(\frac{d}{dt}\theta^p (t)\Big|_{t=t_0})=DF_{\theta^p(t_0)}(X_{\theta^p(t_0)})=Y_{F\circ \theta^p(t_0)}}$. Since ${F\circ \theta^p(0)=F(p)}$, and integral curves are unique, we get that ${F\circ\theta^p(t)=\eta^{F(p)}(t)}$ at least on the domain of ${\theta^p}$.

Thus if ${p\in M_t}$ then ${F(p)\in N_t}$, or equivalently ${F(M_t)\subset N_t}$. But we just wrote that ${F(\theta^p(t))=\eta^{F(p)}(t)}$ where defined, which is just a different form of the equation ${\eta_t\circ F=F\circ \theta_t(p)}$.

We get a nice corollary out of this. If our function ${F:M\rightarrow N}$ was actually a diffeo, then take ${Y=F_*X}$ the pushforward, and we get that the flow of the pushforward is ${\eta_t=F\circ \theta_t\circ F^{-1}}$ and the flow domain is actually equal ${N_t=F(M_t)}$.

In algebraic geometry we care a lot about families of things. In the differentiable world, the nicest case of this would be when you have a smooth submersion: ${F: M\rightarrow N}$, where ${M}$ is compact and both are connected. Then since all values are regular, ${F^{-1}(n_0)}$ is smooth embedded submanifold. If ${N}$ were say ${\mathbb{R}}$ (of course, ${M}$ couldn’t be compact in this case), then we would have a nice 1-dimensional family of manifolds that are parametrized in a nice way.

It turns out to be quite easy to prove that in the above circumstance all fibers are diffeomorphic. In AG we often call this an “iso-trivial” family, although I’m not sure that is the best analogy. The proof basically comes down to the naturality of flows. Given any vector field ${Y}$ on ${N}$, we can lift it to a vector field ${X}$ on ${M}$ that is ${F}$-related. I won’t do the details, but it can be done clearly in nice choice of coordinates ${(x^1, \ldots, x^n)\mapsto (x^1, \ldots, x^{n-k})}$ and then just patch together with a partition of unity.

Let ${M_x}$ be the notation for ${F^{-1}(x)}$. Fix an ${x\in N}$, then by the above naturality lemma ${\theta_t\Big|_{M_x} : M_x\rightarrow M_{\eta_t(x)}}$ is well-defined and hence a diffeomorphism since it has smooth inverse ${\theta_{-t}}$. Let ${y\in N}$. Then as long as there is a vector field on ${N}$ which flows ${x}$ to ${y}$, then we’ve shown that ${M_x\simeq M_y}$, so since ${x}$, ${y}$ were arbitrary, all fibers are diffeomorphic. But there is such a vector field, since ${N}$ is connected.