According to the work of Dennis Sullivan, there exists a smooth flow on the 5-sphere all of whose orbits are periodic although there is no uniform bound on their periods. The question addressed in this thesis is whether such an example can occur in the partially hyperbolic context. That is, does there exist a partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism of a compact manifold such that all the leaves of its center foliation are compact although there is no uniform bound for their volumes. We will show that the answer to the previous question under the very mild hypothesis of dynamical coherence is no. The thesis is organized as follows. In the first chapter we give the necessary background and results in partially hyperbolic dynamics needed for the rest of the work, studying in particular the geometry of the center foliation. Chapter two is devoted to a general discussion of compact foliations. We give proof or sketches of all the relevant results used. Chapter three is the core of the thesis, where we establish the non existence of Sullivan's type of examples in the partially hyperbolic domain, and generalize to diffeomorphisms whose center foliation has arbitrary dimension. The last chapter is devoted to applications of the results of chapter three, where in particular it is proved that if the center foliation of a dynamically coherent partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism is compact and without holonomy, then it is plaque expansive.

According to the work of Dennis Sullivan, there exists a smooth flow on the 5-sphere all of whose orbits are periodic although there is no uniform bound on their periods. The question addressed in this thesis is whether such an example can occur in the partially hyperbolic context. That is, does there exist a partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism of a compact manifold such that all the leaves of its center foliation are compact although there is no uniform bound for their volumes. We will show that the answer to the previous question under the very mild hypothesis of dynamical coherence is no. The thesis is organized as follows. In the first chapter we give the necessary background and results in partially hyperbolic dynamics needed for the rest of the work, studying in particular the geometry of the center foliation. Chapter two is devoted to a general discussion of compact foliations. We give proof or sketches of all the relevant results used. Chapter three is the core of the thesis, where we establish the non existence of Sullivan's type of examples in the partially hyperbolic domain, and generalize to diffeomorphisms whose center foliation has arbitrary dimension. The last chapter is devoted to applications of the results of chapter three, where in particular it is proved that if the center foliation of a dynamically coherent partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism is compact and without holonomy, then it is plaque expansive.