Developable varieties with all singularities at infinity (Q5952936)

The main result of the paper states that a variety in the projective \(n\)-space with Gauss map image of dimension \(r\leq 4\), which is less than the dimension of the variety itself, is the union of \((n-r+1)\)-dimensional cones, each of them contained in a hyperplane, provided that the variety is smooth in an affine \(n\)-subspace. This strengthens a theorem by \textit{H.-H. Wu} and \textit{F. Zheng} [Commun. Anal. Geom. 10, 611-646 (2002; Zbl 1027.53061)], which, under the same hypotheses, claims that the variety is the union of cones of dimension \(>n-r\).