Singularities of Tangent Varieties to Curves and Surfaces

Abstract

It is given the diffeomorphism classification on generic singularities of tangent varieties to curves with arbitrary codimension in a projective space. The generic classifications are performed in terms of certain geometric structures and differential systems on flag manifolds, via several techniques in differentiable algebra. It is provided also the generic diffeomorphism classification of singularities on tangent varieties to contact-integral curves in the standard contact projective space. Moreover we give basic results on the classification of singularities of tangent varieties to generic surfaces and Legendre surfaces.