English

Choosing points on cubic plane curves: rigidity and flexibility

Algebraic Geometry 2024-11-04 v3 Geometric Topology

Abstract

Every smooth cubic plane curve has 9 flex points and 27 sextatic points. We study the following question asked by Farb: Is it true that the known algebraic structures give all the possible ways to continuously choose nn distinct points on every smooth cubic plane curve, for each given positive integer nn? We give an affirmative answer to the question when n=9n=9 and 18 (the smallest open cases), and a negative answer for infinitely many nn's.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.03824,
  title  = {Choosing points on cubic plane curves: rigidity and flexibility},
  author = {Ishan Banerjee and Weiyan Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.03824},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

35 pages, 4 figures. An Appendix was added to the second version, recording a related result that we learned from Curtis McMullen

R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:59:07.117Z