Changing views on curves and surfaces (Q1696176): Difference between revisions

This paper studies ``visual event surfaces'' associated to generic algebraic curves and surfaces in projective three-space. These visual event surfaces are the loci of projection centers at which the curve/surface image undergoes a qualitative change in topology or in number/type of singularities. In the curve case, visual events correspond to Reidemeister moves on knot diagrams, in the surface case they correspond to non-generic singularities from catastrophe theory. These classifications give rise to several ruled components of the visual event surfaces that are treated from an algebraic viewpoint and with computational aspects in mind. In the curve case, the visual event surfaces consist of the tangent developable, the union of all secant lines with co-planar tangents, and the union of all trisecant lines. In the surface case, the visual event surfaces consist of the unions of lines of contact order four, three plus two, and two plus two plus two, respectively, and the envelopes of bitangent planes and tangent planes of contact order three. The authors put visual event surfaces into a proper modern context (for example as iterated singular loci of associated coisotropic hypersurfaces), it features accessible proofs for their classical degree formulas and discusses practical strategies for their actual computation. This can be quite challenging as their degrees can be considerably higher than that of the original curves and surfaces.