Paper 4, Section II, I

Algebraic Geometry
Part II, 2018

State a theorem which describes the canonical divisor of a smooth plane curve CC in terms of the divisor of a hyperplane section. Express the degree of the canonical divisor KCK_{C} and the genus of CC in terms of the degree of CC. [You need not prove these statements.]

From now on, we work over C\mathbb{C}. Consider the curve in A2\mathbf{A}^{2} defined by the equation

y+x3+xy3=0y+x^{3}+x y^{3}=0

Let CC be its projective completion. Show that CC is smooth.

Compute the genus of CC by applying the Riemann-Hurwitz theorem to the morphism CP1C \rightarrow \mathbf{P}^{1} induced from the rational map (x,y)y(x, y) \mapsto y. [You may assume that the discriminant of x3+ax+bx^{3}+a x+b is 4a327b2-4 a^{3}-27 b^{2}.]