Arnold-type invariants of wave fronts on surfaces (Q5952742)

Starting with Arnold's \(St\) and \(J^{\pm}\) invariants of generic planar curves, the author generalizes their wave fronts analogs to the case of wave fronts on an arbitrary surface \(F\). He gives a detailed description of those as well as an explicit formula for a particular surface \(F\neq S^2\), furthermore he obtains necessary and sufficient conditions for an invariant of nongeneric fronts with one nongeneric singular point to be the Vassiliev-type derivative of an invariant of generic fronts. As a byproduct, the author calculates all homotopy groups of the space of Legendrian immersions of \(S^1\) into the spherical cotangent bundle of a surface.