Singular and special points on quadrature domains from an algebraic geometric point of view (Q1109919)

A domain \(\Omega\) in the complex plane is called a quadrature domain if an identity of the kind \[ (*)\quad \int_{\Omega}f dx dy=\sum^{m}_{k=1}\sum^{n_ k-1}_{j=0}c_{kj}f^{(j)}(z_ k) \] holds for all integrable analytic functions f in \(\Omega\). It is known that \(\partial \Omega\) then is an algebraic curve. The main result in the paper is an upper bound for the number of singular points on \(\partial \Omega\) and certain special points in \(\Omega\) in terms of the order \(n=n_ 1+...+n_ m\) of (*). The proof is an application of the genus formula for algebraic curves. An example with \(n=3\) is elaborated in detail and as a byproduct an explicit solution to a moving boundary problem for Hele Shaw flows is obtained. This example also shows that (*) can hold, with fixed data \(\{c_{kj},z_ k\}\), for two different but conformally equivalent \(\Omega\).