Nowhere vanishing torsion closed curves always hide twice (Q1362555)

The authors consider regular simple closed \(C^4\)-curves in Euclidean 3-space which satisfy some mild regularity conditions (nowhere vanishing curvature, no bitangent lines, finite total order contact with any plane, and finitely many vanishing torsion points (vertices)). The notion of Maxwell graph associated to a curve, first defined by the second author [\textit{M. C. Romero Fuster}, ibid. 28, 7-29 (1988; Zbl 0654.53003)] for generic convex curves, can be extended to the wider class of curves considered in this paper. The convex hull of these curves (minus the image of the curve itself) is a smooth ruled developable surface, and the Maxwell graph associated to such a curve is the closure in \(S^2\) of the Gauss map of this (open) surface (Proposition 1). The end points of the Maxwell graph correspond to the vertices (points where torsion changes sign) of the curve (Proposition 2). The main result of the paper is given in Theorem 3: If \(C\) denotes the total number of vertices and \(P\) the total number of support \(n\)-polygons, \(n\geq 3\) (i.e., planes with \(n\) points of tangency with the curve such that not all contact points lie on the same line), then \[ C-P \geq 4-2 \rho, \] where \(\rho\) is the number of components of the curve lying inside its convex hull. From this result follows both the four-vertex theorem for convex curves (Theorem 1), in which case \(\rho=0\), and the ``hiding-twice theorem'' (Theorem 2) which says that \(C=0\) implies \(\rho\geq 2\). For both of these theorems direct proofs which do not use Theorem 3 are also given, providing even sharper estimates for \(C\) in special cases. Other interesting relations involving these numbers were obtained by the second author [loc. cit.] and in [\textit{T. Ozawa}, Topology 24, 1-13 (1985; Zbl 0525.53002); \textit{T. Banchoff}, \textit{T. Gaffney} and \textit{C. McCrory}, ibid., 15-23 (1985; Zbl 0567.53001); \textit{J. J. Nuño Balesteros} and \textit{M. C. Romero Fuster}, Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 112, 519-526 (1992; Zbl 0783.53003)] under stronger genericity assumptions.