Exceptional isomorphisms between complements of affine plane curves

DOI10.1215/00127094-2019-0012MaRDI QIDQ2280533zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Jérémy Blanc, Jean-Philippe Furter, Mattias Hemmig

Publication date 18 December 2019

Published in Duke Mathematical Journal (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.06682

affine spaces complement problem plane curves

Birational automorphisms, Cremona group and generalizations (14E07) Rational and ruled surfaces (14J26) Affine spaces (automorphisms, embeddings, exotic structures, cancellation problem) (14R10) Automorphism groups of (mathbb{C}^n) and affine manifolds (32M17)

Abstract: This article describes the geometry of isomorphisms between complements of geometrically irreducible closed curves in the affine plane

m a t h b b A^{2}

, over an arbitrary field, which do not extend to an automorphism of

m a t h b b A^{2}

. We show that such isomorphisms are quite exceptional. In particular, they occur only when both curves are isomorphic to open subsets of the affine line

m a t h b b A^{1}

, with the same number of complement points, over any field extension of the ground field. Moreover, the isomorphism is uniquely determined by one of the curves, up to left composition with an automorphism of

m a t h b b A^{2}

, except in the case where the curve is isomorphic to the affine line

m a t h b b A^{1}

or to the punctured line

m a t h b b A^{1} s e t m i n u s 0

. If one curve is isomorphic to

m a t h b b A^{1}

, then both curves are in fact equivalent to lines. In addition, for any positive integer

n

, we construct a sequence of

n

pairwise non-equivalent closed embeddings of

m a t h b b A^{1} s e t m i n u s 0

with isomorphic complements. In characteristic~

0

we even construct infinite sequences with this property. Finally, we give a geometric construction that produces a large family of examples of non-isomorphic geometrically irreducible closed curves in

m a t h b b A^{2}

that have isomorphic complements, answering negatively the Complement Problem posed by Hanspeter Kraft.. This also gives a negative answer to the holomorphic version of this problem in any dimension

n g e q 2

. The question had been raised by Pierre-Marie Poloni.

Review text

Let \(k\) be an arbitrary field and denote by \(\bar{k}\) its algebraic closure. The Complement Problem asks whether two geometrically irreducible hypersurfaces \(E,F\) in the affine space \(\mathbb{A}^n\) are isomorphic if their complements in \(\mathbb{A}^n\) are isomorphic. Equivalently the problem can be formulated in commutative algebra as follows: given two polynomials \(P,Q\in k[x_1,\cdots,x_n]\) which are irreducible in \(\bar{k}[x_1,\cdots,x_n]\), and an isomorphism of \(k\)-algebras \(k[x_1,\cdots,x_n,\frac{1}{P}]\cong k[x_1,\cdots,x_n,\frac{1}{Q}]\), is it true that the \(k\)-algebras \(k[x_1,\cdots,x_n]/(P)\) and \(k[x_1,\cdots,x_n]/(Q)\) are isomorphic? This very natural problem was unsolved until Pierre-Marie Poloni recently constructed counterexamples for \(n\geq 3\) in [\textit{P.-M. Poloni}, Comment. Math. Helv. 94, No. 3, 439--444 (2019; Zbl 1441.14202)]. The paper under review gives a negative answer to the Complement Problem for \(n=2\). Note that the counterexamples in dimension two give rise to new counterexamples in higher dimensions different from those of Pierre-Marie Poloni. As a corollary the authors give also a negative answer to the Complement Problem in the holomorphic category, i.e.\ two non biholomorphic algebraic hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{C}^n\) may have biholomorphic complements. Before constructing counterexamples for the Complement Problem, the authors establish various fundamental results concerning the complement of a geometrically irreducible curve in the affine plane \(\mathbb{A}^2\). Let \(C\) and \(D\) be two geometrically irreducible curves in \(\mathbb{A}^2\) such that there is an isomorphism \(\varphi:\mathbb{A}^2\backslash C\rightarrow \mathbb{A}^2\backslash D\) that does not extend to an automorphism of \(\mathbb{A}^2\). Then \(C\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{A}^1\backslash A\) and \(D\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{A}^1\backslash B\) where \(A\) and \(B\) are both finite sets of \(k\)-points of cardinality \(d\). If \(d=0\) then both \(C\) and \(D\) are images of a line under automorphisms of \(\mathbb{A}^2\). If \(d1\) then \(\varphi\) is uniquely determined up to an automorphism of \(\mathbb{A}^2\). When \(d=2\), \(C\) and \(D\) are always isomorphic. Thus if the pair \((C,D)\) gives a counterexample to the Complement Problem then \(d2\). The case where \(d=1\) is further investigated. For any \(n1\), the authors construct explicitly curves \(C_1,\cdots,C_n\) in \(\mathbb{A}^2\), all isomorphic to \(\mathbb{A}^1\backslash\{0\}\), such that \(\mathbb{A}^2\backslash C_i\) are all isomorphic but \(C_i\) is not the image of \(C_j\) under an automorphism of \(\mathbb{A}^2\) for any \(i\neq j\). The paper is well written. We refer the reader to the clear introduction for more complete and precise statements of the main results.

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