Saturday 29 April 2017

Surface with only one parabolic point

We have proved that at an elliptic point, the surface lies in one side of the tangent plane at that point. Exactly, if $K(p)>0$, then there exists a neighborhood $V\subset S$ of $p$ such that $V\cap T_pS=\{p\}$ and $V-\{p\}$ lies in one of the two open halfspaces determined by $T_pS$. 

Here we show a surface with the same property but $K(p)=0$. The surface is obtained by rotating the curve $z=x^4$ around the $z$-axis. At the point $p=(0,0,0)$, $K(p)=0$, the tangent plane $T_pS$ is the $xy$-plane and $S-\{p\}$ lies in the halfspace $z>0$. Exactly, with the usual parametrization $X(x,s)=(x\cos(s), x\sin(s), x^4)$, we have 
$$K(x,s)=\frac{36 x^4}{(1+16x^6)^2},$$
so $K(p)=0$ and the rest of points are elliptic, that is, $p$ is the only parabolic point of $S$.

1 comment:

  1. As you can see, if you make a counts, the point p = (0,0,0) is a plain point instead of a parabolic point.

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