Star points on smooth hypersurfaces

Abstract: A point P on a smooth hypersurface X of degree d in an N-dimensional projective space is called a star point if and only if the intersection of X with the embedded tangent space T_P(X) is a cone with vertex P. This notion is a generalization of total inflection points on plane curves and Eckardt points on smooth cubic surfaces in three-dimensional projective space. We generalize results on the configuration space of total inflection points on plane curves to star points. We give a detailed description of the configuration space for hypersurfaces with two or three star points. We investigate collinear star points and we prove that the number of star points on a smooth hypersurface is finite.

Review text

Let \(X\) be a hypersurface of degree \(d\) in \(\mathbb{P}^n\), \(n \geq 2\). A smooth point \(P \in X\) is called a star point if and only if the intersection \(X \cap T_P(X)\), where \(T_P(X)\) is the tangent plane of \(X\) at \(P\), has multiplicity \(d\) at \(P\). In the case of curves, a star point is traditionally called a total inflection point and in the case of surfaces it is called an Eckardt point. The paper under review has essentially two parts. In the first part the authors study the distribution of star points on a given smooth hypersurface \(X\) of degree \(d\) in \(\mathbb{P}^n\). They show that if \(d \geq 3\), then \(X\) has at most finitely many star points. Moreover, they investigate the number of star points that lie on a given line \(L\). If \(L \subset X\), then it is shown that there are at most two star points on \(L\). If \(L \not\subset X\) and \(P_1, \dots , P_{d-1} \) are different star points of \(X\) on \(L\), then \(L \cap X =\{P_1,\dots , P_{d-1}, P_d\}\) and \(P_d\) is also a star point of \(X\). In the second part of the paper the authors study configuration spaces of star points. They define by \(\mathcal{V}_{d,e}\) to be the scheme of \(e\)-tuples \((L_1, \dots, L_e)\), where \(L_i=(\Pi_i,P_i,C_i)\), \(\Pi_i \) is a plane in \(\mathbb{P}^n\), \(P_i\) is a point in \(\Pi_i\), \(C_i \subset \Pi_i\) a good cone of degree \(d\) in \(\Pi_i\) and such that there is a smooth hypersurface \(X\) of degree \(d\) in \(\mathbb{P}^n\) such that \(X \cap \Pi_i=C_i\), \(1 \leq i \leq e\). They obtain upper bounds for the dimension of \(\mathcal{V}_{d,e}\) and they calculate the number of its components and their corresponding dimensions in the cases \(e=2, 3\).

Recommendations

Cites work

Cited in

(13)

This page was built for publication: Star points on smooth hypersurfaces

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2268607)