We consider a developable surface normal to a surface along a curve on the surface. We call it a normal developable surface along the curve on the surface. We investigate the uniqueness and the singularities of such developable surfaces. We discover two new invariants of curves on a surface that characterize these singularities.

As an application of the theory of graph-like Legendrian unfoldings, relations of the hidden structures of caustics, and wave front propagations are revealed.

We study orthogonal projections of embedded surfaces M in H3+ (−1) along horocycles to planes. The singularities of the projections capture the extrinsic geometry of M related to the lightcone Gauss map. We give geometric characterizations of these singularities and prove a Koenderink-type theorem that relates the hyperbolic curvature of the surface to the curvature of the profile and of the normal section of the surface. We also prove duality results concerning the bifurcation set of the family of projections.

Simple characterizations of a pseudosphere or a plane in Minkowski 3-space by the existence of pseudocircles are given.

We study affine invariants of plane curves from the view point of the singularity theory of smooth functions

We study the differential geometry of hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space. As an application of the theory of Lagrangian singularities, we investigate the contact of hypersurfaces with families of hyperspheres or equidistant hyperplanes.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 53A35. Secondary 58C27

We study some properties of space-like submanifolds in Minkowski n-space, whose points are all umbilic with respect to some normal field. As a consequence of these and some results contained in a paper by Asperti and Dajczer, we obtain that being ν-umbilic with respect to a parallel light-like normal field implies conformal flatness for submanifolds of dimension n − 2 ≥ 3. In the case of surfaces, we relate the umbilicity condition to that of total semi-umbilicity (degeneracy of the curvature ellipse at every point). Moreover, if the considered normal field is parallel, we show that it is everywhere time-like, space-like or light-like if and only if the surface is included in a hyperbolic 3-space, a de Sitter 3-space or a three-dimensional light cone, respectively. We also give characterizations of total semi-umbilicity for surfaces contained in hyperbolic 4-space, de Sitter 4-space and four-dimensional light cone.

A line congruence is a two-parameter family of lines in R3. In this paper we study singularities of line congruences. We show that generic singularities of general line congruences are the same as those of stable mappings between three-dimensional manifolds. Moreover, we also study singularities of normal congruences and equiaffine normal congruences from the viewpoint of the theory of Lagrangian singularities.

In this paper we adopt the hyperboloid in Minkowski space as the model of hyperbolic space. We define the hyperbolic Gauss map and the hyperbolic Gauss indicatrix of a hypersurface in hyperbolic space. The hyperbolic Gauss map has been introduced by Ch. Epstein [J. Reine Angew. Math. 372 (1986) 96–135] in the Poincaré ball model, which is very useful for the study of constant mean curvature surfaces. However, it is very hard to perform the calculation because it has an intrinsic form. Here, we give an extrinsic definition and we study the singularities. In the study of the singularities of the hyperbolic Gauss map (indicatrix), we find that the hyperbolic Gauss indicatrix is much easier to calculate. We introduce the notion of hyperbolic Gauss–Kronecker curvature whose zero sets correspond to the singular set of the hyperbolic Gauss map (indicatrix). We also develop a local differential geometry of hypersurfaces concerning their contact with hyperhorospheres.

2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: 53A25, 53A05, 58C27.

We study singularities of ruled surfaces in ℝ3. The main result asserts that only cross-caps appear as singularities for generic ruled surfaces.

We define the notion of lightcone Gauss maps,lightcone pedal curves and lightcone developables of spacelike curves inMinkowski 3-space and establish the relationships between singularities of theseobjects and geometric invariants of curves under the action of the Lorentzgroup.

We study affine invariants of space curves from the viewpoint of singularity theory of smooth functions. With the aid of singularity theory, we define a new equi-affine frame for space curves. We also introduce two surfaces associated with this equi-affine frame and give a generic classification of the singularities of those surfaces.

We classify completely integrable holonomic systems of first-order differential equations for one real-valued function by equivalence under the group of point transformations in the sense of Sophus Lie. In order to pursue the classification, we use the notion of one parameter Legendrian unfoldings which induces a special class of divergent diagrams of map germs which are called integral diagrams. Our normal forms are represented by integral diagrams.

We consider some properties of completely integrable first-order differential equations for real-valued functions. In order to study this subject, we introduce the theory of Legendrian unfoldings. We give a characterisation of equations with classical complete solutions in terms of Legendrian unfoldings, and also assert that the set of equations with singular solutions is an open set in the space of completely integrable equations even though such a set is thin in the space of all equations.

A wavefront set is defined to be an image of Legendrian mapping. In this note we prove that generic wavefront sets have stable local topological structures by using Mather's stratification theory.