The behavior of curvature functions at cusps and inflection points (Q428924)

A 3/2-cusp of a given plane curve is a special singular point of this curve. At a 3/2-cusp of the given plane curve, both the Euclidean curvature \(\kappa_g\) and the affine curvature \(\kappa_A\) diverge. In this paper, the authors show that at a 3/2-cusp \(\sqrt{|s_g|}\kappa_g\) and \((s_A)^2\kappa_A\) (called the Euclidean and affine normalized curvature, respectively) are \(C^{\infty}\)-functions of the variable \(t\), where \(s_g\) (resp. \(s_A\)) is the Euclidean (resp. affine) arclength parameter of the curve corresponding to the 3/2-cusp \(s_g = 0\) (resp. \(s_A = 0\)). Moreover, they give a characterization of the behavior of the curvature functions \(\kappa_g\) and \(\kappa_A\) at 3/2-cusps. On the other hand, inflection points are also singular points of curves in affine geometry. They give a similar characterization of affine curvature functions near generic inflection points. As an application, new affine invariants of 3/2-cusps and generic inflection points are given.