This volume consists of ten articles which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of some of the foundational aspects of singularity theory. Authored by world experts, the various contributions deal with both classical material and modern developments, covering a wide range of topics which are linked to each other in fundamental ways. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject. This is the first volume in a series which aims to provide an accessible account of the state-of-the-art of the subject, its frontiers, and its interactions with other areas of research. The book is addressed to graduate students and newcomers to the theory, as well as to specialists who can use it as a guidebook.

This book is an introduction to singularities for graduate students and researchers. It is said that algebraic geometry originated in the seventeenth century with the famous work Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences by Descartes. In that book he introduced coordinates to the study of geometry. After its publication, research on algebraic varieties developed steadily. Many beautiful results emerged in mathematicians’ works. Most of them were about non-singular varieties. Singularities were considered “bad” objects that interfered with knowledge of the structure of an algebraic variety. In the past three decades, however, it has become clear that singularities are necessary for us to have a good description of the framework of varieties. For example, it is impossible to formulate minimal model theory for higher-dimensional cases without singularities. Another example is that the moduli spaces of varieties have natural compactification, the boundaries of which correspond to singular varieties. A remarkable fact is that the study of singularities is developing and people are beginning to see that singularities are interesting and can be handled by human beings. This book is a handy introduction to singularities for anyone interested in singularities. The focus is on an isolated singularity in an algebraic variety. After preparation of varieties, sheaves, and homological algebra, some known results about 2-dim ensional isolated singularities are introduced. Then a classification of higher-dimensional isolated singularities is shown according to plurigenera and the behavior of singularities under a deformation is studied.

This book presents a broad overview of the important recent progress which led to the emergence of new ideas in Lipschitz geometry and singularities, and started to build bridges to several major areas of singularity theory. Providing all the necessary background in a series of introductory lectures, it also contains Pham and Teissier's previously unpublished pioneering work on the Lipschitz classification of germs of plane complex algebraic curves. While a real or complex algebraic variety is topologically locally conical, it is in general not metrically conical; there are parts of its link with non-trivial topology which shrink faster than linearly when approaching the special point. The essence of the Lipschitz geometry of singularities is captured by the problem of building classifications of the germs up to local bi-Lipschitz homeomorphism. The Lipschitz geometry of a singular space germ is then its equivalence class in this category. The book is aimed at graduate students and researchers from other fields of geometry who are interested in studying the multiple open questions offered by this new subject.

Singularity theory is a young, rapidly-growing topic with connections to algebraic geometry, complex analysis, commutative algebra, representations theory, Lie groups theory and topology, and many applications in the natural and technical sciences. This book presents the basic singularity theory of analytic spaces, including local deformation theory and the theory of plane curve singularities. It includes complete proofs.

This book presents the proceedings of the joint U.S.-China Seminar on Singularity and Complex Geometry held at the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy, Beijing, in June 1994. This was the first gathering of Chinese and American mathematicians working in these fields (several Japanese mathematicians also took part). The volume covers a wide range of problems in areas such as CR-manifolds, value distribution theory of holomorphic curves, topology of the complements of algebraic plane curves with singularities and arrangements, topology of non-isolated singularities, gauge theory on resolutions of simple singularities, and residues of foliations. The articles give accounts of research in these fast developing areas. Much of the material appears here for the first time in print. Titles in this series are co-published with International Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Offers an overview of selected topics on the topology of singularities, with emphasis on its relations to other branches of geometry and topology. This book studies real analytic singularities which arise from the topological and geometric study of holomorphic vector fields and foliations.

Constructible and perverse sheaves are the algebraic counterpart of the decomposition of a singular space into smooth manifolds. This introduction to the subject can be regarded as a textbook on modern algebraic topology, treating the cohomology of spaces with sheaf (as opposed to constant) coefficients. The author helps readers progress quickly from the basic theory to current research questions, thoroughly supported along the way by examples and exercises.

Singularity theory appears in numerous branches of mathematics, as well as in many emerging areas such as robotics, control theory, imaging, and various evolving areas in physics. The purpose of this proceedings volume is to cover recent developments in singularity theory and to introduce young researchers from developing countries to singularities in geometry and topology. The contributions discuss singularities in both complex and real geometry. As such, they provide a natural continuation of the previous school on singularities held at ICTP (1991), which is recognized as having had a major influence in the field.

This is the second volume of the Handbook of the Geometry and Topology of Singularities, a series which aims to provide an accessible account of the state-of-the-art of the subject, its frontiers, and its interactions with other areas of research. This volume consists of ten chapters which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of some of the foundational aspects of singularity theory and related topics. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject, and in other subjects. Authored by world experts, the various contributions deal with both classical material and modern developments, covering a wide range of topics which are linked to each other in fundamental ways. The book is addressed to graduate students and newcomers to the theory, as well as to specialists who can use it as a guidebook.

Singular algebraic curves have been in the focus of study in algebraic geometry from the very beginning, and till now remain a subject of an active research related to many modern developments in algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry, and tropical geometry. The monograph suggests a unified approach to the geometry of singular algebraic curves on algebraic surfaces and their families, which applies to arbitrary singularities, allows one to treat all main questions concerning the geometry of equisingular families of curves, and, finally, leads to results which can be viewed as the best possible in a reasonable sense. Various methods of the cohomology vanishing theory as well as the patchworking construction with its modifications will be of a special interest for experts in algebraic geometry and singularity theory. The introductory chapters on zero-dimensional schemes and global deformation theory can well serve as a material for special courses and seminars for graduate and post-graduate students.Geometry in general plays a leading role in modern mathematics, and algebraic geometry is the most advanced area of research in geometry. In turn, algebraic curves for more than one century have been the central subject of algebraic geometry both in fundamental theoretic questions and in applications to other fields of mathematics and mathematical physics. Particularly, the local and global study of singular algebraic curves involves a variety of methods and deep ideas from geometry, analysis, algebra, combinatorics and suggests a number of hard classical and newly appeared problems which inspire further development in this research area.