Some classical formul{\ae} for curves and surfaces
Algebraic Geometry
2025-12-03 v2
Abstract
The goal of this text is to present the computation by Salmon, in the second half of the XIXth century, of various numbers enumerating planes with a prescribed tangency pattern with a sufficiently general surface in (or, equivalently, of hyperplane sections of with prescribed singularities). Emblematic among these are the number of tritangent planes, and the number of planes cutting out a curve with a tacnode.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.18686,
title = {Some classical formul{\ae} for curves and surfaces},
author = {Thomas Dedieu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.18686},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
v2: minor improvements to the appendix on polarity