Dual curves and pseudoholomorphic curves (Q1404806)

Following M. Gromov's idea, the author generalizes the concept of almost complex structure on a 4-dimensional manifold to what he calls a pseudocomplex (or elliptic) structure. This is a determined \(2\times2\) system on a 4-dimensional manifold with the same symbol as for the Cauchy-Riemann equation (therefore an elliptic system). The author carefully describes the local structure and applies Cartan's method to solve the equivalence problem. These elliptic structures behave very similar to the almost complex ones: all the main features like elliptic regularity and continuation, positivity of intersections, removal of singularities, compactness and so forth are preserved. The author states this and often just remarks that the proofs mimic the pseudoholomorphic situation. This is true, but in some cases the exposition is inaccurate. For example, the author makes a wrong definition of the Royden pseudonorm. Also some necessary ingredients of these elliptic generalizations, like local existence results and possibility of deformations, which require an analytic machinery, are merely omitted. The elliptic structures have an advantage over the almost complex structures in that they provide a generalization of the projective duality. Moreover, the author relates the dual curves to a family of Darboux integrable systems. The paper is finished with a set of interesting open problems.