English

Arnold-type invariants of wave fronts on surfaces

Geometric Topology 2009-09-25 v2 Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

Recently Arnold's \St\St and J±J^{\pm} invariants of generic planar curves have been generalized to the case of generic planar wave fronts. We generalize these invariants to the case of wave fronts on an arbitrary surface FF. All invariants satisfying the axioms which naturally generalize the axioms used by Arnold are explicitly described. We also give an explicit formula for the finest order one J+J^+-type invariant of fronts on an orientable surface FS2F\neq S^2. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for an invariant of nongeneric fronts with one nongeneric singular point to be the Vassiliev-type derivative of an invariant of generic fronts. As a byproduct, we calculate all homotopy groups of the space of Legendrian immersions of S1S^1 into the spherical cotangent bundle of a surface.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/9901133,
  title  = {Arnold-type invariants of wave fronts on surfaces},
  author = {Vladimir V. Tchernov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/9901133},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

42 pages, 22 figures We added an example of an order one $J^-$-type invariant of fronts on a surface $F$ that does not come from an order one invariant of Legendrian knots in $PT^*F$, and corrected the typos

R2 v1 2026-07-22T18:01:42.207Z