Rational unicuspidal plane curves of low degree

Abstract

We completely classify all plane curves of degree at most 30 with a unique cuspidal (locally unibranch) singular point and rational normalization in terms of the Newton pairs parameterizing the cusp. We distinguish between prime and composite degree in the classification and study the relationship between prime or composite degree and the number of distinct topological types of cuspidal singularities. Motivated by wall-crossing in moduli of curves, we also survey several geometric properties of rational unicuspidal plane curves.