On complete \(m\)-arcs (Q6066480)

The authors investigate complete arcs arising from \(\mathbb{F}_q\)-rational points of plane curves, with \(q\) a power of the prime number \(p\). A \((k,m)\)-arc is a set \(S\) of \(k\) points of the projective plane \(\mathbb{P}(\mathbb{F}_q)\) with the property that no \(m+1\) points lie on the same line and that there exist \(m\) points on a same line. The arc is said to be complete if it is maximal with respect to the inclusion. The paper focuses on complete \((k,m)\)-arcs of small size. In their main result (Theorem 4.1) the authors prove that, under some geometric assumptions, an irreducible plane curve \(\mathcal{C}\) of degree \(m<p\) can be used to construct a complete \((k,m)\)-arc of \(\mathbb{P}^2(\mathbb{F}_q)\) of size \(k\) at most \(\#\mathcal{C}(\mathbb{F}_q)+O(m^5)\), provided that \(q>c\). Here \(\#\mathcal{C}(\mathbb{F}_q)\) denotes the number of \(\mathbb{F}_q\)-rational points of the curve \(\mathcal{C}\), and \(c\) is an explicit constant independent of \(q\). The geometric assumptions on \(\mathcal{C}\) are that the singular points of \(\mathcal{C}\) are contained in the line at infinity, and that \(\mathcal{C}\) is birationally equivalent to its dual \(\mathcal{C}^*\) via the Gauss map. The proof relies on tools from Galois theory over global fields. Note that, from known results on algebraic curves, for irreducible, non-singular plane projective curves, the condition of being birationally equivalent to the dual curve is a generic condition as long as the characteristic is different from \(2\) if the base field is large enough (Remark 3.4). The authors also point out that the constant \(c\) can be chosen to be \(9m^2(m!)^2\) (Remark 4.3). Moreover, the assumption \(p>m\) can be dropped at the price of increasing the size of the complete arc with the addition of \(mT\) points, where \(T\) is the number of inflection tangents to the curve \(\mathcal{C}\) (Theorem 4.5). In the last section, the authors apply their construction to hyperelliptic curves, and Artin-Schreier curves of degree \(m > p\).