On the parameter dependence of the real cubic surfaces in Arnold's form (Q2569851): Difference between revisions

It is well known that a smooth real cubic hypersurface of a three-dimensional projective space is either a connected surface of even genus \(\leq 6\), or it has three connected components all homeomorphic to a sphere. In this paper the authors consider homogeneous cubic polynomials in the Arnold normal form \[ x^3+ y^3+z^3+w^3+(ax+by+cz+dw)^3, \] restricting themselves to the case when the parameters \((a,b,c,d)\) are real. By studying the critical points of a suitable map, they divide the subset of the parameter space corresponding to the smooth cubics in \(10\) connected regions, such that all cubics in the same region are diffeomorphic. Then they determine the topological type of the cubics in each region by using Gröbner bases to count the number of real lines (that determines the genus) in each cubic surface.