Basic nets in the projective plane

The notion of basic net (called also basic polyhedron) on $S^2$ plays a central role in Conway's approach to enumeration of knots and links in $S^3$. Drobotukhina applied this approach for links in $RP^3$ using basic nets on $RP^2$. By a result of Nakamoto, all basic nets on $S^2$ can be obtained from a very explicit family of minimal basic nets (the nets $(2\times n)^*$, $n\ge3$, in Conway's notation) by two local transformations. We prove a similar result for basic nets in $RP^2$. We prove also that a graph on $RP^2$ is uniquely determined by its pull-back on $S^3$ (the proof is based on Lefschetz fix point theorem).Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure

On the number of singular points of plane curves

This is an extended, renovated and updated report on a joint work which the second named author presented at the Conference on Algebraic Geometry held at Saitama University, 15-17 of March, 1995. The main result is an inequality for the numerical type of singularities of a plane curve, which involves the degree of the curve, the multiplicities and the Milnor numbers of its singular points. It is a corollary of the logarithmic Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau's type inequality due to Miyaoka. It was first proven by F. Sakai at 1990 and rediscovered by the authors independently in the particular case of an irreducible cuspidal curve at 1992. Our proof is based on the localization, the local Zariski--Fujita decomposition and uses a graph discriminant calculus. The key point is a local analog of the BMY-inequality for a plane curve germ. As a corollary, a boundedness criterium for a family of plane curves has been obtained. Another application of our methods is the following fact: a rigid rational cuspidal plane curve cannot have more than 9 cusps.Comment: LaTeX, 24 pages with 3 figures, author-supplied DVI file available at http://www.math.duke.edu/preprints/95-00.dv

The number of trees half of whose vertices are leaves and asymptotic enumeration of plane real algebraic curves

The number of topologically different plane real algebraic curves of a given degree $d$ has the form $\exp(C d^2 + o(d^2))$. We determine the best available upper bound for the constant $C$. This bound follows from Arnold inequalities on the number of empty ovals. To evaluate its rate we show its equivalence with the rate of growth of the number of trees half of whose vertices are leaves and evaluate the latter rate.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Plane curves with a big fundamental group of the complement

Let C \s \pr^2 be an irreducible plane curve whose dual C^* \s \pr^{2*} is an immersed curve which is neither a conic nor a nodal cubic. The main result states that the Poincar\'e group \pi_1(\pr^2 \se C) contains a free group with two generators. If the geometric genus $g$ of $C$ is at least 2, then a subgroup of $G$ can be mapped epimorphically onto the fundamental group of the normalization of $C$, and the result follows. To handle the cases $g=0,1$, we construct universal families of immersed plane curves and their Picard bundles. This allows us to reduce the consideration to the case of Pl\"ucker curves. Such a curve $C$ can be regarded as a plane section of the corresponding discriminant hypersurface (cf. [Zar, DoLib]). Applying Zariski--Lefschetz type arguments we deduce the result from `the bigness' of the $d$-th braid group $B_{d,g}$ of the Riemann surface of $C$.Comment: 23 pages LaTeX. A revised version. The unnecessary restriction $d \ge 2g - 1$ of the previous version has been removed, and the main result has taken its final for