Envelopes of Legendre curves in the unit tangent bundle over the Euclidean plane (Q2410867)

If the curves are regular, then the tangent is well-defined but the classical definitions of envelopes are vague for singular plane curves. In the present review paper, the author is interested to elucidate the definition of the envelope for a family of singular curves. As singular curves, the author introduces a one-parameter family of Legendre curves in the unit tangent bundle over the Euclidean plane and the curvature. He reviews the definitions of envelopes for one-parameter family of plane curves which are given by implicit functions and parametric curves and denote these envelopes by \(E_{I}\) and \(E_{P}\) respectively. He presents a moving frame and the curvature of the one-parameter family of Legendre curves. He shows the existence and uniqueness theorem for one-parameter families of Legendre curves. He defines an envelope of a one-parameter family of Legendre curves. The envelope is a Legendre curve and he gives a curvature of the envelope as a Legendre curve. The author also gives relationships between the envelopes and one-parameter family of Legendre curves. In addition, the author investigates some properties of the envelopes. In spite of these, the author defines a bi-Legendre curve as a special class of one-parameter family of Legendre curves and gives a relationship between envelopes. He also establishes the existence and uniqueness theorem for bi-Legendre curves. It is mentioned that all maps and manifolds considered in this paper are differential of class \(C^{\infty}\). The author illustrates many examples to verify and justify his results.