Jaydeep Chipalkatti, On the Coincidences of Pascal Lines,
Forum Geometricorum, 16 (2016) 1--21.
Abstract. Let K denote a smooth conic in the complex projective plane. Pascal's
theorem says that, given six points A, B, C, D, E, F on K, the three
intersection points AE \cap BF, AD \cap CF, BD \cap CE are collinear. This
defines the Pascal line of the array
A |
B |
C |
F |
E |
D |
and one gets
sixty such lines in general by permuting the points. In this paper we consider
the variety ψ of sextuples {A,…, F}, for
which some of the Pascal lines coincide. We show that ψ has two
irreducible components: a five-dimensional component of sextuples in
involution, and a four-dimensional component of what will be called `ricochet
configurations'. This gives a complete synthetic characterization of points in ψ.
The proof relies upon Gröbner basis techniques
to solve multivariate polynomial equations; the implementation was done in two
distinct computer algebra systems.
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