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5. Maximally Inflected Quintics

    Since 9=3(5-2), a rational plane quintic has 9 ramification points, counted with multiplicity. The table below gives names for the different types of ramification points possible for quartic curves, together with the lowest order terms (germ) in a parameterization of the ramification. View the pictures of the germs.

Name Index Partition Germ
Flex (0,1,3) 1 (s,s3)
Cusp (0,2,3) 11 (s2,s3)
Planar (0,1,4) 2 (s,s3)
Claw (0,2,4) 21 (s2,s4)
Box (0,3,4) 22 (s3,s4)
Flat Flex (0,1,5) 3 (s3,s5)
Beak (0,2,5) 31 (s3,s5)
  (0,3,5) 32 (s3,s5)
  (0,4,5) 33 (s4,s5)
( The Term `Box' refers to its Young diagram, a better term should be found)
    In the future, we hope to display here examples of quintics with all possibilities of ramification type. This means drawing quite a lot of curves, and supplying (marginally) intelligent text, which is quite a big project. At present, the links below are to pages that we have created with pictures.

The first few files show pictures of quintics with only flexes, cusps, or planar points. Not all of these have been completed.

  1. Quintics with 9 flexes.
  2. Quintics with 7 flexes and one cusp.
  3. Quintics with 7 flexes and one planar point.
  4. Quintics with 5 flexes and 2 cusps. Not yet begun
  5. Quintics with 5 flexes, one cusp, and one planar point. Not yet begun
  6. Quintics with 5 flexes and 2 planar points. Not yet begun
  7. Quintics with 3 flexes and 3 cusps. Three pictures
  8. Quintics with 3 flexes, 2 cusps, and a planar point. Not yet begun
  9. Quintics with 3 flexes, 2 planar points, and a cusp. Not yet begun
  10. Quintics with 3 flexes and 3 planar points. Not yet begun
  11. Quintics with 1 flex. Not yet begun

These next files have pictures of quintics with a ramification point of multiplicity greater than 2. Each file contains pictures of curves with at least one ramification point of the indicated type.

  1. Quintics with a flat flex. Mostly completed, but has a cool movie!
  2. Quintics with a claw. Half-completed
  3. Quintics with a box point. Barely begun
  4. Quintics with a beak. Almost completed
  5. Quintics with a ramification of order at least 5.


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