Abundance of 3-planes on real projective hypersurfaces

Abstract

We show that a generic real projective $n$-dimensional hypersurface of odd degree $d$, such that $4(n-2)=\binom{d+3}3$, contains "many" real 3-planes, namely, in the logarithmic scale their number has the same rate of growth, $d^3\log d$, as the number of complex 3-planes. This estimate is based on the interpretation of a suitable signed count of the 3-planes as the Euler number of an appropriate bundle.