Evolution of singularities of potential flows in collision-free media and the metamorphosis of caustics in three-dimensional space

Abstract

The authors describe the critical values of the maps at time''t'' and their evolution as ''t'' changes for potential initial velocity fields in general position under the assumption that the force field is potential. The paper is concerned with the structure and evolution of caustics of a general one-parameter family of Lagrangian maps of manifolds of dimension not exceeding three. For each type of evolution, the authors give a detailed geometric description of the structure of the singularity. The investigation required new algebraic information about the manifold of polynomials with multiple roots; these are given in the paper.