Singularities of worldsheets along framed particle trajectories in Minkowski three-space

Abstract

Modeling the worldsheets along the trajectory (a string) of a point particle (a 0-brane) as two timelike surfaces in 3-subspace of Minkowskian spacetime, respectively, the work aims at analyzing the topological structures of these two worldsheets along the trajectory of the point particle from the view point of singularity theory. Different from the regular curves, the traveling trajectory (modeled as framed timelike curve) of the particle is allowed to be singular, two worldsheets are generated by the traveling trajectories of the particle. As applications of singularity theory, we classify the singularities of these two worldsheets along the traveling trajectory of the particle. Using the approach of the unfolding theory in singularity theory, we find two new geometric invariants which are useful for characterizing the local topological structures of singularities of these two worldsheets along the particle. It is revealed that there exist cuspidal edge type and swallowtail type of singularities for these two worldsheets under the appropriate conditions of geometric invariants. Meanwhile, it is also pointed out that the types of singularities of these two worldsheets have a close relationships to the order of contacts between these two worldsheets and two timelike planes, respectively. Finally, some examples are presented to interpret our theoretical results.