Sharp Bertini Theorem for Plane Curves over Finite Fields

Abstract

We prove that if $C$ is a reflexive smooth plane curve of degree $d$ defined over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ with $d\leqslant q+1$ , then there is an $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ -line $L$ that intersects $C$ transversely. We also prove the same result for non-reflexive curves of degree $p+1$ and $2p+1$ when $q=p^{r}$ .