Automorphisms of the Generalized Fermat curves

TL;DR

This paper studies the automorphism groups of generalized Fermat curves, proving their uniqueness under certain conditions and showing that all automorphisms extend to ambient projective space, with special cases handled using projective intersection theory.

Contribution

It establishes the uniqueness of the generalized Fermat group for curves of type $(k,n)$ when $(k-1)(n-1)>2$, and demonstrates that automorphisms extend to the ambient projective space under various conditions.

Findings

Unique generalized Fermat group for $(k,n)$ when $(k-1)(n-1)>2$

Automorphisms extend to ambient projective space for these curves

Fixed points of automorphisms coincide with hyper-osculating points under certain conditions

Abstract

Let $K$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p \geq 0$. A generalized Fermat curve of type $(k,n)$, where $k,n \geq 2$ are integers (for $p \neq 0$ we also assume that $k$ is relatively prime to $p$), is a non-singular irreducible projective algebraic curve $F_{k,n}$ defined over $K$ admitting a group of automorphisms $H \cong {\mathbb Z}_{k}^{n}$ so that $F_{k,n}/H$ is the projective line with exactly $(n+1)$ cone points, each one of order $k$. Such a group $H$ is called a generalized Fermat group of type $(k,n)$. If $(n-1)(k-1)>2$, then $F_{k,n}$ has genus $g_{n,k}>1$ and it is known to be non-hyperelliptic. In this paper, we prove that every generalized Fermat curve of type $(k,n)$ has a unique generalized Fermat group of type $(k,n)$ if $(k-1)(n-1)>2$ (for $p>0$ we also assume that $k-1$ is not a power of $p$). Generalized Fermat curves of type $(k,n)$ can be described as a suitable fiber product of $(n-1)$ classical Fermat curves of degree $k$. We prove that, for $(k-1)(n-1)>2$ (for $p>0$ we also assume that $k-1$ is not a power of $p$), each automorphism of such a fiber product curve can be extended to an automorphism of the ambient projective space. In the case that $p>0$ and $k-1$ is a power of $p$, we use tools from the theory of complete projective intersections in order to prove that, for $k$ and $n+1$ relatively prime, every automorphism of the fiber product curve can also be extended to an automorphism of the ambient projective space. In this article we also prove that the set of fixed points of the non-trivial elements of the generalized Fermat group coincide with the hyper-osculating points of the fiber product model under the assumption that the characteristic $p$ is either zero or $p>k^{n-1}$.