On the Bennequin invariant and the geometry of wave fronts

DOI10.1023/A:1004936711196MaRDI QIDQ1357636zbMATH OpenFDO

Publication date 22 March 1998

Published in Geometriae Dedicata (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004936711196

framed knots plane curves Vassiliev invariants wave fronts

Curves in Euclidean and related spaces (53A04) General geometric structures on manifolds (almost complex, almost product structures, etc.) (53C15) Immersions in differential topology (57R42)

Review text

A smooth closed curve in an oriented surface \(M\) is an oriented immersed circle in \(M\). The connected components of the set of all smooth closed curves \({\mathcal C}\) are classified by the degree of the tangential Gauss map. \textit{V. I. Arnol'd} [`Topological invariants of plane curves and caustics' (Univ. Lect. Ser. 5, AMS, Providence/RI) (1994; Zbl 0858.57001); Adv. Sov. Math. 21, 33-91 (1994; Zbl 0864.57027)] introduced the three basic invariants \((J^\pm,St)\) of the three components of the discriminant, which correspond to one triple point and two different self-tangencies of immersions. The author applies this theory to the study of the geometry of wave fronts in the standard 2-sphere, in the Euclidean plane and in the hyperbolic plane. Some enumerative formulae similar to the Plücker formulae in algebraic geometry are given in order to compute the generalized Bennequin invariant \(J^+\) in terms of the geometry of the front. In the case of affine wave fronts, some formulae previously announced by S. L. Tabachnikov are proved. Results of O. Viro, F. Fabricius-Bjerre, and J. L. Weiner for smooth plane and spherical curves are generalized to wave fronts.

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