All lines on a smooth cubic surface in terms of three skew lines

MaRDI QIDQ2075852zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Stephen McKean, Daniel Minahan, Tianyi Zhang

Publication date 16 February 2022

Published in The New York Journal of Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.10367, http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2021/27-50.html

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zbMATH Keywords

cubic surfaceenumerative geometryreal lines

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Rational and ruled surfaces (14J26) Classical problems, Schubert calculus (14N15)

Abstract: Jordan showed that the incidence variety of a smooth cubic surface containing 27 lines has solvable Galois group over the incidence variety of a smooth cubic surface containing 3 skew lines. As noted by Harris, it follows that for any smooth cubic surface, there exist formulas for all 27 lines in terms of any 3 skew lines. In response to a question of Farb, we compute these formulas explicitly. We also discuss how these formulas relate to Schl"afli's count of lines on real smooth cubic surfaces.

Review text

As the title suggests, the paper gives explicitly all lines of a cubic surface starting from three skew lines. The method used is classical projective geometry. That is, the authors fix three skew lines in \(\mathbb P^3_{\mathbb C}\), and a generic cubic polynomial \(f\) whose zero locus is a smooth surface containing the three lines. All lines of the surface are obtained, explicitly, in terms of the coefficients of \(f\). This result extends to any other smooth surface using a projective transformation. Finally, the authors get a complete classification of the number of lines of any real smooth cubic surface containing an elliptic line.

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Cites work

• 3264 and all that. A second course in algebraic geometry
• Abundance of Real Lines on Real Projective Hypersurfaces
• An octanomial model for cubic surfaces
• Galois groups of enumerative problems
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3127561 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3101938 (Why is no real title available?)
• Intrinsic signs and lower bounds in real algebraic geometry

Cited in

(6)

• Between geometry and the theory of substitutions: a case study concerning the twenty-seven lines on a cubic surface
• Three-divisible families of skew lines on a smooth projective quintic
• An arithmetic count of the lines on a smooth cubic surface
• A short note on Cayley-Salmon equations
• A cubic surface of revolution
• Maximal number of skew lines on Fermat surfaces

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