Algebraic analysis of offsets to hypersurfaces

In this paper, we present a complete algebraic analysis of degeneration and existence of simple and special components of generalized offsets to irreducible hypersurfaces over algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero. More precisely, we analyze the degeneration situations when offseting, and we state that there exist, at most, a finite set of distances for which the offset of a hypersurface may degenerate. As a consequence of this analysis, an algorithmic method to determine such distances is derived. Furthermore, as an application of these results, a complete degeneration analysis of the generalized offset to the sphere is developed. In addition, we study the existence of simple and special components of the offset. In this context we prove that, in the case of classical offsets, there always exists at least one simple component and, in the case of generalized offsets, we prove that for almost every distance and for almost every isometry, all components of the offset are simple. Received November 9, 1998; in final form March 5, 1999 / Published online May 8, 2000