Polar covariants of plane cubics and quartics (Q2365612)

The authors give a modern proof of the results of Scorza on the theory of covariant quartics. They give a proof that is independent of the theory of apolarity. They study the birational map from the space of quartics to its cover parametrizing the pairs consisting of a nonsingular quartic and an even theta characteristic on it and the natural birational equivalence between the corresponding moduli spaces. They pay special attention to the set of definition of the Scorza map. In particular they extend the Scorza isomorphism to a larger set which they call the set of weakly nondegenerate quartics. The authors study the degenerate Clebsch curves. The covariant quartic of a Clebsch quartic is a Lüroth quartic. The relation between a Lüroth quartic and rank 2-bundles has been studied by \textit{W. Barth} [Invent. Math. 42, 63-91 (1977; Zbl 0386.14005)]. The authors also extend the Scorza result to show that the restriction of the Scorza map to the locus of Clebsch quartics is injective.