Monodromy of hyperplane sections of a smooth curve

ID: monodromy-of-hyperplane-sections-of-a-smooth-curve

Monodromy of hyperplane sections of a smooth curve by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-11-05
Let , , be a smooth irreducible nondegenerate projective variety of dimension one and degree . Let be the open subset of the dual projective space consisting of hyperplanes meeting in distinct points. The incidence projection
is a -sheeted covering space in the complex analytic topology. Its monodromy is the full symmetric group .[ref]
The incidence space choosing two distinct ordered intersection points is irreducible, so the monodromy action of a covering space is two-transitive. A small loop around an ordinary tangent hyperplane exchanges its two nearby intersection points and fixes the others. Conjugating this transposition by double transitivity gives every transposition, and these generate . In particular the action on -element subsets is transitive for each . For a degree-one projective line, a transverse section has one point and the corresponding group is the trivial .

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