Corank 1 singularities of stable smooth maps and special tangent hyperplanes to a space curve (Q2508699): Difference between revisions

The author studies the space of \(C^{\infty }-\)smooth closed curves in \(\mathbb R\mathbb P^n\) endowed with the \(C^{\infty }\)-topology. If \(\gamma \) is a smooth curve in \( \mathbb R\mathbb P^3\) and \(C\) denotes the number of the flattening points of \(\gamma \) then the author proves that the number of planes tangent to \(\gamma \) at three distinct points is equal to \((N+\theta (\gamma )C)/2\) modulo 2, where \(N\) denotes the total number of points where \(\gamma \) intersects the osculating planes (to \(\gamma \)) at the flattening points transversally, and \(\theta (\gamma )\) is the number of noncontractible components of \(\gamma .\) It is a generalization of the well-known Freedman theorem, which states that if a smooth connected closed generic curve in \(\mathbb R^3\) has no flattening points then the number of its triple tangent planes is even. The multidimensional analogs of this formula describing global properties of projective curves are also given and it is shown that these results follow from certain general facts about the topology of codimension 1 singularities of stable maps between manifolds having the same dimensions.