Conics on smooth quartic surfaces

Abstract

We prove that the maximal number of conics, a priori irreducible of reducible, on a smooth spatial quartic surface is 800, realized by a unique quartic. We also classify quartics with many (at least 720) conics. The maximal number of real conics on a real quartics is between 656 and 718.

Cosmetic changes, refs added, typos corrected, GAP code uploaded