Conic configurations via dual of quartic curves (Q1983201)

In this interesting paper, phenomenological in its nature, the author constructs new examples of plane conic (and cubic) arrangements in the complex projective plane. To be more precise, the main aim of the paper under review is to study and construct sets \(\mathcal{C}\) of plane irreducible conics each of which contains at least \(6\) points of a special set of points \(\mathcal{P}\). The basic idea and somehow strategy for obtaining such sets of points grows up from the following example. Let \(C \subset \mathbb{P}^{2}_{\mathbb{C}}\) be a smooth elliptic curve and let \(\check{C} \subset \mathbb{P}^{2}_{\mathbb{C}}\) be its dual curve. The singularities of the dual curve (having degree \(6\)) is a set \(\mathcal{P}_{9}\) of \(9\) cusps -- these singular points correspond to the \(9\) flexes of the elliptic curve \(C\). It turns out that there exists a set of \(12\) irreducible conics \(\mathcal{C}_{12}\) such that each conic is passing through at least \(6\) points from \(\mathcal{P}_{9}\). One can observe that in fact these \(12\) conics determine \(9\) intersection points of multiplicity \(8\) and \(12\) double intersection points. This conic-point configuration \((\mathcal{C}_{12},\mathcal{P}_{9})\) is called by many authors as a Chilean configuration. In the present paper the author studies conic arrangements that go through at least \(6\) points of the singularities of concretely chosen dual curves, for instance for the dual curve to the Fermat quartic, the Klein quartic, a randomly chosen quartic curve which has \(28\) rational bitangents, etc. As a result, the author obtains many interesting examples of conic arrangements which have some extreme properties. For instance, if we consider the Klein quartic curve \(\mathcal{K}\) defined by the equation \(x^{3}y + y^{3}z + z^{3}x = 0\), then its dual curve \(\check{\mathcal{K}}\) has degree \(12\) and it has exactly \(52\) singular points which is the union of \(28\) nodes \(\mathcal{P}_{28}\) corresponding to \(28\) bitangents and \(24\) cusps \(\mathcal{P}_{24}\) corresponding to the flex points of that quartic. One can show that there are exactly \(21\) irreducible conics \(\mathcal{C}_{21}\) that contain \(8\) points from the set \(\mathcal{P}_{28}\), and through each point in \(\mathcal{P}_{28}\) there are \(6\) conics, so we have \(28\) sixtuple intersection points, and we can find additionally \(420\) double intersection points. The idea presented by the author is very interesting and might be further developed in the direction of constructing some extreme curve arrangements in the plane having low Harbourne incidences, or high logarithmic Chern slopes.