Automorphism groups of 3-nodal rational curves (Q1110599)

In this paper the author studies the automorphism group of a rational curve with only nodes as singularites. A rational nodal curve of arithmetic genus g (i.e. with g nodes) is isomorphic to the quotient of \({\mathbb{P}}\) (i.e. complex projective line) obtained by identifying g pairs of distinct points. - By \(X=(a_ 1,b_ 1,...,a_ g,b_ g)\) is denoted the rational nodal curve of arithmetic genus g obtained by identifying the points \(a_ i\) and \(b_ i\) of \({\mathbb{P}}\) for \(i=1...g\), and by Aut(X) the automorphism group of X. The author obtains that \(| Aut(X)| \leq 4g(g-1)\) and determines which groups occur as automorphism groups of 2-nodal and 3-nodal rational curves. Thus he obtains that if X is 2-nodal then Aut(X) is the dihedral group \(D_ 2\) or \(D_ 4\) and if it is 3-nodal, Aut(X) is the cyclic group \({\mathbb{Z}}_ 2, D_ 2, D_ 3, D_ 6\) or one of the octahedral groups.