Abstract
Consider a convex piece of curve in the plane and four points lying on it. One wants to find a sufficient condition on these points to grant that there exists a rational cubic passing through them, and interpolating the curve in a prescribed way. We found such a condition, studying real pencils of cubics. A generic complex pencil has twelve singular (nodal) cubics and nine distinct base points; any eight of them determines the ninth one and hence the pencil. If the pencil is real, exactly eight of its singular cubics are distinguished, that is real, with a loop containing some base points. If eight of the base points lie in convex position in \({\mathbb{R}P^2}\) , one can often deduce the sequence of distinguished cubics out of some simpler combinatorial data, expressed in terms of mutual positions of points and conics.
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Touzé, S.FL. Pencils of cubics as tools to solve an interpolation problem. AAECC 18, 53–70 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00200-006-0028-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00200-006-0028-3