Order one invariants of planar curves (Q960571)

In this paper, a planar curve means an immersion of the circle into the plane. A generic singularity of the curve stands for either a tangency of first order between two strands (\(J\)-type) or three strands meeting at a point each two of which are transverse (\(S\)-type). The letter \({\mathcal C}_n\) denotes the space of curves having precisely \(n\) generic singularities (\({\mathcal C}_0\) is the space of stable curves). A function \(f\) of \({\mathcal C}_0\) to a vector space over the rational numbers is called an invariant if it is constant on the connected components, and such an invariant \(f\) is called of order one if its second derivative \(f^{(2)}\) vanishes on \({\mathcal C}_2\). The author constructs two universal order one invariants, the first one being more explicit than the second one. Thus, the author obtains a complete description of order one invariants taking values in an arbitrary vector space over the rational numbers. The space of invariants spanned by order one \(J\)- and \(S\)-type invariants is proved to be much smaller than the space of order one invariants. Analogous studies for spherical curves are given in the author's preprint [Order one invariants of spherical curves, arXiv:math/0710.2101 (2007)].