On isolated singularities of surfaces which do not affect the conditions of adjunction (Part III.)

Extract

In the second part of this paper I pointed out how the presence of any singular point or points of the kind considered in the first part, on a rational surface, corresponds to a subgroup of the group of symmetry of the polytope which represents the properties of the system of base points in the plane representation of the surface. The subgroup is generated by reflexions, and may be the direct product of one or more factors (all the primes of symmetry in one factor being perpendicular to all those in any other factor). Each factor corresponds to a singular point on the surface, namely (in Coxeter's notation), a factor [ ] to a conic node C₂, a factor [3ⁿ] to a binode B_n+2 (n ≥ 1), a factor [3^n,1,1] to a unode U_n+5, (n ≥ 1), and finally a factor [3^n,2,1] to a unode The possible subgroups in the finite groups that arise have been enumerated by Coxeter; and we shall find that every subgroup generated by reflexions in the group of symmetry of the polytope in ε dimensions which represents ε base points corresponds to a possible configuration of the base points, in which just those rational curves of grade − 2 are actual which correspond to primes of symmetry belonging to the subgroup; without exception, for ε ≤ 6; with one exception—the subgroup [ ]⁷—for ε = 7; and with three exceptions—the subgroups [ ]⁷, [ ]⁸, and [3^1,1,1 × [ ]⁴—for ε = 8. Since moreover the system |k| of cubics passing simply through all the base points is in all these cases an actually existing system, for which all the rational curves of grade − 2 are fundamental, its projective model (or in the case ε = 8, in which |k| is only a pencil, the projective model of the system |2k|) provides a rational surface on which all the sets of curves corresponding to the subgroups in question actually appear as singular points.