Singularities and photographs of surfaces (Q1187365)

In this interesting paper the authors study local patterns appearing on ``photographs'' of generic lighted surfaces. In \(\mathbb{R}^ 3\), we fix two distinct directions: the first is the direction \(E\) of the parallel rays, and the second is the ``angle'' of the photograph. A parametrized surface in \(\mathbb{R}^ 3\) has the family of level curves of the intensity of the light \(N\cdot E\), where \(N\) is the unit normal vector field along the surface. The surface with this family of the curves is projected along the second direction. Thus a local pattern appearing on the photograph is described by a (germ of) divergent diagram \(\mathbb{R}\leftarrow\mathbb{R}^ 2\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^ 2\). In fact the main result of this paper is as follows: For a generic surface in \(\mathbb{R}^ 3\), the classification of germs of divergent diagrams thus obtained coincides with the generic classification of divergent diagrams \(\mathbb{R}\leftarrow\mathbb{R}^ 2\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^ 2\). (The generic singularities of divergent diagrams are clarified by the first author intimately in the previous papers.) It is studied also the relation of the viewpoint in this paper with the geometry of generic surfaces.