On the geometry of hypersurfaces in R4

Author(s)

Ana Claudia Nabarro

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC/SB)
• Defense date: 2000-07-17

Examining board members

Farid Tari; Sueli Irene Rodrigues Costa; Ronaldo Alves Garcia; Washington Luiz Marar; Maria Aparecida Soares Ruas

• Advisor: Farid Tari

Abstract

We initiate in this thesis the study of the local flat geometry of smooth hypersurfaces M in R4 using singularity theory. This geometry is obtained by studying the contact of M with lines, planes and hyperplanes. The contact with hyperplanes (respectively, lines and planes) is measured by the singularities of the elements of the family of height functions H: M x S3 → R (respectively, projections to hyperplanes P : M x S3 → R3, and projections to planes II: M x G(2,4) → R2), where S3 is the unit sphere in R4, and G(2,4) is the Grassmanian of 2-planes in R4. We write locally M in Monge form w = f(x, y, z) and obtain the conditions on the coefflcients of the Taylor expansion of f for identifying the generic singularities of Hu, Pu and IIu. We study the local structures of the set of points in M of a given singularity type using the Monge-Taylor map and Thom\'s transversality theorems. We also show that there is a duality relation between some strata of the bifurcation sets of H and P, and deduce geometric properties about these sets. We study in more details the behaviour of P at a partial flat umbilic point. The family II is of 4 parameters, so the generic singularities that occur in IIu are of codimension ≤ 4. Therefore we need to complete the list of singularities of germs R2, O → R2, O given in [45]. We do this using \"Transversal\", a program elaborated by Neil Kirk [26]. We also obtain geometric criteria for recognizing the codimension ≤ 1 singularities of IIu and for establishing when II is a versal unfolding of IIu. (AU)