Fitting ideals and multiple points of surface parameterizations (Q743922)

For a surface in projective 3-space given as the image of a birational parametrization, the singularities of the parametrization, corresponding to cuspidal curves on the surface, are easy to find: just compute the zeroes of the Jacoboan of the parametrization. It is less clear how to compute the nodal curves, also known as self-intersection curves. Implicitization and computing the zeroes of the gradient of the implicit equation is just a theoretical possibility: in many examples, this is too expensive. This paper contains a direct method for computing the self-intersection curve without implicitization.