Curves in Cages: An Algebro-Geometric Zoo

DOI10.2307/27642059zbMATH Open1156.14019arXivmath/0508076OpenAlexW2950810583MaRDI QIDQ3545882FDOQ3545882

Gabriel Katz

Publication date: 11 December 2008

Published in: The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The paper is concerned with families of plane algebraic curves that contain a given and quite special finite set X of points in the projective plane. We focus on the case in which the set X is formed by transversally intersecting pairs of lines selected from two given finite families of cardinality d. The union of all lines from both families is called a cage, and the intersection X consists of d^2 points at which a line from the first family intersects a line from the second. The points of X are called the nodes of the cage. We study the subsets A of the nodal set X such that any plane algebraic curve C of degree d that contains A must contain X as well. As a corollary, we get a few generalizations of the famous Pascal theorem, generalizations that employ polygons (instead of hexagons as in Pascal's theorem) inscribed in a quadratic curve. Our results are closely related to the classical theorems of Chasles and Bacharach. Although the nodal sets X produced by our cages are quite special in comparison to more general complete intersections studied by Bacharach, the cages provide us with a much better grip on the combinatorics of subsets A of X with the property that is described above.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0508076

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zbMATH Keywords

complete intersectionalgebraic curveBacharach duality theorem

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Questions of classical algebraic geometry (51N35) Curves in algebraic geometry (14Hxx)

Cited In (3)

• Illumination of Pascal's hexagrammum and octagrammum mysticum
• Theorems about quadrilaterals and conics
• Varieties in cages: a little zoo of algebraic geometry

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