Tritangents and their space sextics (Q2324666)

A space sextic curve is a smooth algebraic curve in \(\mathbb{P}^3\) which is the intersection of a quadric and a cubic surface. In this paper, the authors focus their attention on the tritangents, i.e. planes which are tangent to the curve at every point of intersection with it, providing information on the intrinsic and extrinsic geometry of the curve. As it is explained in the abstract, the two classical results of Algebraic Geometry that the branch curve of a del Pezzo surface of degree \(1\) can be embedded as a space sextic curve in \(\mathbb{P}^3\) and that every space sextic curve has exactly \(120\) tritangents corresponding to its odd theta characteristics, are treated here from a computational point of view. The authors give an algorithm to construct space sextic curves by means of the blow up of \(\mathbb{P}^2\) at eight points and algorithms to compute the \(120\) tritangents and their Steiner system of any space sextic. They also develop efficient inverses to these methods and offer an algorithm that allows to either reconstruct the original eight points in \(\mathbb{P}^2\) from a space sextic or verify that this is not possible. In addition, the construction of \textit{D. Lehavi} [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2015, No. 19, 9472--9485 (2015; Zbl 1329.14069)] which recovers a space sextic from its tritangents and Steiner system, is extended. The algorithms presented here have been implemented in MAGMA.