Tangent lines, inflections, and vertices of closed curves

Curves in Euclidean and related spaces (53A04) Singularities of differentiable mappings in differential topology (57R45) Variational problems in applications to the theory of geodesics (problems in one independent variable) (58E10)

Abstract: We show that every smooth closed curve C immersed in Euclidean 3-space satisfies the sharp inequality 2(P+I)+V >5 which relates the numbers P of pairs of parallel tangent lines, I of inflections (or points of vanishing curvature), and V of vertices (or points of vanishing torsion) of C. We also show that 2(P'+I)+V >3, where P' is the number of pairs of concordant parallel tangent lines. The proofs, which employ curve shortening flow with surgery, are based on corresponding inequalities for the numbers of double points, singularities, and inflections of closed curves in the real projective plane and the sphere which intersect every closed geodesic. These findings extend some classical results in curve theory including works of Moebius, Fenchel, and Segre, which is also known as Arnold's "tennis ball theorem".

Review text

The authors present some important results in the study of closed curves in the Euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\). The paper consists of eight sections. In the first section, some important notions are re-called concerning the theory of curves and some theorems are presented with inequalities on the number of singular points of a curve, which represent some of the main results of the paper. In the following sections, some other interesting results concerning closed curves are obtained. For the proofs of the main results, the author uses important results from projective geometry and geodesic theory. In the last section, some well-chosen examples are presented regarding the theory of closed curves. In conclusion, the paper is well written and presents some important results at the border between the theory of curves and projective geometry.

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