Monodromy

We develop in detail most of the theory of the Picard scheme that Grothendieck sketched in two Bourbaki talks and in commentaries on them. Also, we review in brief much of the rest of the theory developed by Grothendieck and by others. But we begin with a twelve-page historical introduction, which traces the development of the ideas from Bernoulli to Grothendieck, and which may appeal to a wider audience.

For a generic (polynomial) one-parameter deformation of a complete intersection, there is defined its monodromy zeta-function. We provide explicit formulae for this zeta-function in terms of the corresponding Newton polyhedra in the case the deformation is non-degenerate with respect to its Newton polyhedra. Using this result we obtain the formula for the monodromy zeta-function at the origin of a polynomial on a complete intersection, which is an analog of the Libgober--Sper...

We study the notion of regular singularities for parameterized complex ordinary linear differential systems, prove an analogue of the Schlesinger theorem for systems with regular singularities and solve both a parameterized version of the weak Riemann-Hilbert Problem and a special case of the inverse problem in parameterized Picard-Vessiot theory.

Let X be a nonsingular algebraic variety in characteristic zero. To an effective divisor on X Kontsevich has associated a certain 'motivic integral', living in a completion of the Grothendieck ring of algebraic varieties. He used this invariant to show that birational Calabi-Yau varieties have the same Hodge numbers. Then Denef and Loeser introduced the motivic (Igusa) zeta function, associated to a regular function on X, which specializes to both the classical p-adic Igusa z...

This is the manuscript for Proceedings of International Conference and Workshop on Valuation Theory held at University of Saskachewan, Canada in 1999. I have succeeded in showing that any two-dimensional hypersurface singularities of germs of varieties in any characteristic can be resolved by iterated monoidal transformations with centers in smooth subvarieties. The new proof for the two-dimensional case depends on new ideas. Ideas are essentially different from Abhyankar's o...

These notes give a basic introduction to the theory of $p$-adic and motivic zeta functions, motivic integration, and the monodromy conjecture.

Several authors have proved Lefschetz type formulae for the local Euler obstruction. In particular, a result of this type is proved in [BLS].The formula proved in that paper turns out to be equivalent to saying that the local Euler obstruction, as a constructible function, satisfies the local Euler condition (in bivariant theory) with respect to general linear forms. The purpose of this work is to understand what prevents the local Euler obstruction of satisfying the local ...

This article recounts the interaction of topology and singularity theory (mainly singularities of complex algebraic varieties) which started in the early part of this century and bloomed in the 1960's with the work of Hirzebruch, Brieskorn, Milnor and others. Some of the topics are followed to the present day. (A chapter for the book "History of Topology", ed. I. M. James)

The following pullback problem will be considered. Given a finite holomorphic map germ $\phi : (\mathbb{C}^{n}, 0) \to (\mathbb{C}^{n}, 0)$ and an analytic germ $X$ in the target, if the preimage $Y = \phi^{-1}(X)$, taken with the reduced structure, is smooth, so is $X$. The main aim of this paper is to give an affirmative solution for $X$ being a complete intersection. The case, where $Y$ is not contained in the ramification divisor $Z$ of $\phi$, was established by Ebenfelt...

This article introduces, informally, the substance and the spirit of Grothendieck's theory of the Picard scheme, highlighting its elegant simplicity, natural generality, and ingenious originality against the larger historical record.