Plane Curves With Nodes

Abstract

A smooth algebraic curve is birationally equivalent to a nodal plane curve. One of the main problems in the theory of plane curves is to describe the situation of nodes of an irreducible nodal plane curve (see [16, Art. 45], [10], [7, Book IV, Chapter I, §5], [12, p. 584], and [3]).Let n denote the degree of a nodal curve and d the number of nodes. The case (AZ, d) — (6,9) has been analyzed by Halphen [10]. It follows from Lemma 3.5 and Proposition 3.6 that this is an exceptional case. The case d ≦n(n + 3)/6, d ≦(n — 1)(n — 2)/2, and (n, d) ≠ (6,9) was investigated by Arbarello and Cornalba [3]. We present a simpler proof (Corollary 3.8).We consider the main case which is particularly important due to its applications to the moduli variety of curves, compare [19, Chapter VIII, Section 4]. Let Vn,d be the variety of irreducible curves of degree n with d nodes and no other singularities such that each curve of Vn,d can be degenerated into n lines in general position (see [17]).