Non-existence of higher order non-singular holomorphic immersions (Q1065977)

The purpose of this note is to study holomorphic immersions of the form \(f: {\mathbb{P}}_ n\to {\mathbb{P}}_ N\) or more generally \(f: V\to {\mathbb{P}}_ N\) where \({\mathbb{P}}_ n\) and \({\mathbb{P}}_ N\) are complex projective spaces and V is a nonsingular hypersurface in \({\mathbb{P}}_{n+1}\). The main results are inequalities relating n, N, the degree of f, the degree of V and the least order of an inflection point of f. The proof uses the symmetric power operators in K-theory. The inequalities are obtained by studying the Chern classes of holomorphic vector bundles E associated to the map f and observing that if \(c_ m(E)\) is nonzero then the rank of E is at least m.