Curvature loci of 3-manifolds

Abstract

We refine the affine classification of real nets of quadrics in order to obtain generic curvature loci of regular $3$-manifolds in ${\mathbb{R}}^6$ and singular corank $1$ $3$-manifolds in ${\mathbb{R}}^5$. For this, we characterize the type of the curvature locus by the number and type of solutions of a system of equations given by 4 ternary cubics (which is a determinantal variety in some cases). We also study how singularities of the curvature locus of a regular 3-manifold can go to infinity when the manifold is projected orthogonally in a tangent direction.

20 pages, 6 figures and 5 tables