Focal Sets in Certain Riemannian Manifolds

Abstract

In recent years the geometry of generic submanifolds of Euclidean space has been theobject of much study. Thorn hinted in [7] that the focal set of such a submanifold couldprofitably be studied by using the family of distance squared functions on thesubmanifold from points of the ambient space. For a generic submanifold the focal set isthe catastrophe or bifurcation set of this family. The key to obtaining results on thelocal structure of this focal set is a transversality theorem of Looijenga [5]; for analternative exposition see [8].