On families of singular plane projective curves (Q1059685)

From the uto's introdution: This article presents some results about algebraic families of plane curves with singularities. More precisely, classical geometers have considered the so called ''complete, continuous systems of plane curves, having certain singularities'', especially in the case where the singularities are nodes and cusps. Some of their analyses are not very rigorous, especially because in order to make the basic notions precise, it is unavoidable to use some rather abstract modern notions (such as the presence of nilpotent elements in the local rings), which do not appear in classical geometry. Modern foundational material appears in \textit{J. M. Wahl}'s article in Am. J. Math. 96, 529-577 (1974; Zbl 0299.14008), in the case of curves with nodes and cusps. The main technique there is to use infinitesimal deformation theory. The techniques used in this paper are more elementary but (perhaps due to its basic character) they seem to work, to some extent, with great generality and be rather powerful. The basic idea about this technique is found in the classical article by \textit{W. Chow} and \textit{B. L. van der Waerden} [''Zur algebraischen Geometrie. IX'', Math. Ann. 113, 692-704 (1937; Zbl 0016.04004)]. There, the case of curves with nodes is studied, but rather than considering directly plane curves of this kind, one considers systems \(\alpha =(C;P_ 1,...,P_{\delta}),\) where \(P_ i\) is a node of C, \(i=1,...,\delta\). The fact that \(P_ i\) is a node imposes certain conditions to a ''general'' curve of equations on \(\sum a_{ijk}x^ i_ 0x^ j_ 1x^ k_ 2\), from that one obtains equations of the subvariety of \({\mathbb{P}}^{N+2\delta}\), \(N=n(n+3)\), the parametrizing \(\alpha\) 's as above. This allows an easy study of the basic properties of this variety (especially of \(W_{n,\delta}\), the union of those components containing a point \((C;P_ 1,...,P_{\delta})\) where C has exactly \(\delta\) nodes at \(P_ 1,...,P_{\delta})\). The projection of W into \({\mathbb{P}}^ N\) is the famous ''Severi variety'', studied by \textit{F. Severi} in the ''Anhang F'' of his book: ''Vorlesungen über algebraische Geometrie'' (Leipzig-Berlin 1921). - What is done in the present paper is to try to generalize Van der Waerden's approach to the case of singularities more complicated than nodes, and to carefully study the relation between the subscheme of \({\mathbb{P}}^{N+2\delta}\), analogous to \(W_{n,\delta}\) in the case of nodes, and its projection in \({\mathbb{P}}^ N\) (whose components will be, in the classical terminology, ''irreducible complete continuous systems of plane curves with singularities'').