Degree and class of caustics by reflection for a generic source

DOI10.1016/J.CRMA.2013.04.019MaRDI QIDQ351382zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Alfrederic Josse, Françoise Pène

Publication date 11 July 2013

Published in Comptes Rendus. Mathématique. Académie des Sciences, Paris (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1846

zbMATH Keywords

causticcaustic by reflectioncaustic mapcaustic of a plane curveplane curve

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Plane and space curves (14H50) Projective techniques in algebraic geometry (14N05)

Abstract: We are interested in the study of caustics by reflection of irreducible algebraic planar curves (in the complex projective plane). We prove the birationality of the caustic map (for a generic light position). We also give simple formulas for the degree and the class of caustics by reflection valid for any irreducible algebraic curve of degree at least 2 and for a generic light position.

Review text

Let \(C \subset \mathbb {P}^2(\mathbb {C})\) be an irreducible curve of degree \(d\geq 2\). For each \(P\in \mathbb {P}^2(\mathbb {C})\) the caustic (or caustic by reflection) \(\Sigma _P(C)\) is the Zariski closure of the envelope of all lines coming from \(P\) and reflected by \(C\). In this note the authors prove that for a general \(P\) the caustic map is birational. The novelty with respect to an old (unpublished, but cited in this note) work is that this is true for all irreducible \(C\)'s, not just for a general curve of each degree. The degree (\(=1\)) entered in their formulas of the degree and the class of \(\Sigma _S(C)\) printed respectively in [\textit{A. Josse} and \textit{F. Pène}, ``On the degree of caustics by reflection, Commun. Algebra (accepted)], [\textit{A. Josse} and \textit{F. Pène}, ``On the class of caustic by reflexion, preprint, \url{arXiv:1210.6651}].

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• On the Degree of Caustics by Reflection
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Cites work

• Focal loci of algebraic hypersurfaces: A general theory
• Focal loci of algebraic varieties i
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1027930 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3236687 (Why is no real title available?)
• On the class of caustics by reflection of planar curves

Cited in

(9)

• On caustics by reflection of algebraic surfaces
• Catacaustics of a hypersurface in the Euclidean \(n\)-space
• Polar varieties revisited
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5994622 (Why is no real title available?)
• Caustics in Extended Euclidean Space
• On the class of caustics by reflection of planar curves
• Caustics of plane curves, their birationality and matrix projections
• On the Degree of Caustics by Reflection
• Caustics through the looking glass

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