On the Blaschke conjecture for 3-webs (Q2434062)

In 1955, Blaschke conjectured that for planar 3-webs the linearization conditions are the vanishing of four 9th order invariants. The authors prove that the Blaschke estimation of the functional codimension of the orbits of the linearizable 3-webs was correct, but the number of invariants was not. Moreover, the problem has invariants of order 8 which does not match Blaschke's prediction. This problem is very difficult because its solution is related to jets of very high order. In the paper the problem is reduced to the solvability of an overdetermined system of nonlinear partial differential equations on the components of the affine deformation tensor. The authors prove that for nonparallelizable 3-webs, the solvability of the system indicated above is equivalent to the existence of real and smooth solutions of a system of 5 algebraic equations of degrees not exceeding 17, 18, 18, 24 and 24. This allows the authors to find relative differential invariants whose vanishing leads to the linearizability of a 3-web. In addition, the authors establish an algorithm for determining whether a given 3-web is linearizable. This algorithm is based on an investigation of the existence of a real solution of the 5 algebraic equations mentioned above.