On stability of generic subriemannian caustic in the three-space

Abstract The singularities of exponential mappings in subriemannian geometry are interesting objects, that are already non-trivial at the local level, contrarily to their Riemannian analogs. The simplest case is the three-dimensional contact case. Here we show that the corresponding generic caustics have moduli at the origin, and the first module that occurs has a simple geometric interpretation. On the contrary, we prove a stability result of the “big wave front”, that is, of the graph of the multivalued arclength function, reparametrized in a certain way. This object is a three-dimensional surface, which has also the natural structure of a wave front. The projection on the three-dimension…