Conjecture on the range of real bitangents of smooth real plane sextics

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Let CC be a smooth sextic curve in the real projective plane PR2\mathbb{P}^2_\mathbb{R}. A bitangent of CC is a line tangent to CC at two points, and a bitangent is real when it is defined over R\mathbb{R}. Real-bitangent range conjecture. The number of real bitangents of CC ranges from 1212 to 306306. The lower bound is attained by curves of types empty, 1{\rm 1}, 2{\rm 2}, (11){\rm (11)}, and (hyp){\rm (hyp)}, while the upper bound is attained by certain 1111-oval curves of Gudkov type (51)5(51)5. This conjecture concerns the possible extremal numbers of real bitangents among the rigid isotopy types of smooth real sextics; the cited experiments identify examples attaining both bounds, but no resolution beyond the experimental evidence is supplied here.

References

Primary source

Nidhi Kaihnsa, Mario Kummer, Daniel Plaumann, Mahsa Sayyary Namin and Bernd Sturmfels, “Sixty-Four Curves of Degree Six”, arXiv:1703.01660 (2017).

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