Cubic curve

In mathematics, a cubic plane curve is a plane algebraic curve C defined by a cubic equation

applied to homogeneous coordinates x:y:z for the projective plane; or the inhomogeneous version for the affine space determined by setting z = 1 in such an equation. Here F is a non-zero linear combination of the third-degree monomials

These are ten in number; therefore the cubic curves form a projective space of dimension 9, over any given field K. Each point P imposes a single linear condition on F, if we ask that C pass through P. Therefore, we can find some cubic curve through any nine given points, which may be degenerate, and may not be unique, but will be unique and non-degenerate if the points are in general position; compare to two points determining a line and how five points determine a conic. If two cubics pass through a given set of nine points, then in fact a pencil of cubics does, and the points satisfy additional properties; see Cayley–Bacharach theorem.

A cubic curve may have a singular point, in which case it has a parametrization in terms of a projective line. Otherwise a non-singular cubic curve is known to have nine points of inflection, over an algebraically closed field such as the complex numbers. This can be shown by taking the homogeneous version of the Hessian matrix, which defines again a cubic, and intersecting it with C; the intersections are then counted by Bézout's theorem. However, only three of these points may be real, so that the others cannot be seen in the real projective plane by drawing the curve. The nine inflection points of a non-singular cubic have the property that every line passing through two of them contains exactly three inflection points.

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