Singularities of normal quartic surfaces. I: (\(\mathrm{char}= 2\)) (Q2155638)

In this very interesting paper, the author shows, using rather elementary methods, that the maximal number of singular points of a normal quartic surface in \(\mathbb{P}^{3}_{\mathbb{K}}\), where \(\mathbb{K}\) is an algebraically closed field of characteristic 2, is at most 16, and the author provides easy examples which lead to the conjecture that in fact the maximal number is at most 14. An explicit example of a quartic surface with 14 singular points has the following presentation: \(X:=\{(z,x_{1},x_{2},x_{3}) \, : z^{2}(x_{1}x_{2}+x_{3}^{2})+(y_{3}+x_{1})(y_{3}+x_{2})y_{3}(y_{3}+x_{1}+x_{2}) = 0, \,\, y_{3}=a_{3}x_{3}+a_{2}x_{2}+a_{1}x_{1} \text{ with } a_{3}\neq 0, a_{1},a_{2},a_{3} \text{ general}\}\). More precisely, the author shows, among others, that if \(X\) is a normal quartic surface defined over an algebraically closed field \(\mathbb{K}\) of characteristic 2, then: a) If \(X\) has a point of multiplicity 3, then \(|\mathrm{Sing}(X)|\leq 7\), b) If \(X\) has a double point \(P\) such that the projection with centre \(P\) is an inseparable double cover of \(\mathbb{P}^{2}_{\mathbb{K}}\), then \(\mathrm{Sing}(X) \leq 16\), and there exists a case with \(|\mathrm{Sing}(X)|=14\). In the second part of the work, written together with \textit{M. Schuett} [``Singularities of normal quartic surfaces. II: \((\mathrm{char}=2)\)'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2110.03078}], the authors show that in fact \(|\mathrm{Sing}(X)|\leq 14\) with equality only if the singular points are nodes and the minimal resolution of \(X\) is a supersingular \(K3\) surface.