Equisingular Families of Projective Curves

The purpose, mainly expository and speculative, of this paper---an outgrowth of a survey lecture at the September 1997 Obergurgl working week---is to indicate some (not all) of the efforts that have been made to interpret equisingularity, and connections among them; and to suggest directions for further exploration. Zariski defined equisingularity on an n-dimensional hypersurface V via stratification by ``dimensionality type," an integer associated to a point by means of a ...

We study geometric properties of certain obstructed equisingular families of projective hypersurfaces with emphasis on smoothness, reducibility, being reduced, and having expected dimension. In the case of minimal obstructness, we give a detailed description of such families corresponding to quasihomogeneous singularities. Next we study the behavior of these properties with respect to stable equivalence of singularities. We show that under certain conditions, stabilizatio...

Let P^2_r be the projective plane blown up at r generic points. Denote by E_0,E_1,...,E_r the strict transform of a generic straight line on P^2 and the exceptional divisors of the blown-up points on P^2_r respectively. We consider the variety V of all irreducible curves C in |dE_0-d_1E_1-...-d_rE_r| with k nodes as the only singularities and give asymptotically nearly optimal sufficient conditions for its smoothness, irreducibility and non-emptyness. Moreover, we extend our ...

In this paper we describe projective curves and surfaces such that almost all their hyperplane sections are projectively equivalent. Our description is complete for curves and close to being complete for smooth surfaces. In the appendix we make some remarks on connections between the mentioned property of a projective variety and its adjunction properties.

We explore some equisingularity criteria in one parameter families of generically reduced curves. We prove the equivalence between Whitney regularity and Zariski's discriminant criterion. We prove that topological triviality implies smoothness of the normalized surface. Examples are given to show that Witney regularity and equisaturation are not stable under the blow-up of the singular locus nor under the Nash modification.

In this survey paper we give an overview on some aspects of singularities of algebraic varieties over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic. We review in particular results on equisingularity of plane curve singularities, classification of hypersurface singularities and determinacy of arbitrary singularities. The section on equisingularity has its roots in two important early papers by Antonio Campillo. One emphasis is on the differences between positive a...

In this work we study equisingularity in a one-parameter flat family of generically reduced curves. We consider some equisingular criteria as topological triviality, Whitney equisingularity and strong simultaneous resolution. In this context, we prove that Whitney equisingularity is equivalent to strong simultaneous resolution and it is also equivalent to the constancy of the Milnor number and the multiplicity of the fibers. These results are extensions to the case of flat de...

We present new results on equisingularity and equinormalizability of families with isolated non-normal singularities (INNS) of arbitrary dimension. We define a $\delta$-invariant and a $\mu$-invariant for an INNS and prove necessary and sufficient numerical conditions for equinormalizability and weak equinormalizability using $\delta$ and $\mu$. Moreover, we determine the number of connected components of the Milnor fibre of an arbitrary INNS. For families of generically redu...

We study the behavior of limits of tangents in topologically equivalent spaces. In the context of families of generically reduced curves, we introduce the $s$-invariant of a curve and we show that in a Whitney equisingular family with the property that the $s$-invariant is constant along the parameter space, the number of tangents of each curve of the family is constant. In the context of families of isolated surface singularities, we show through examples that Whitney equisi...

We prove that if $\{f_t\}$ is a family of line singularities with constant L\^e numbers and such that $f_0$ is a homogeneous polynomial, then $\{f_t\}$ is equimultiple. This extends to line singularities a well known theorem of A. M. Gabri\`elov and A. G. Ku\v{s}nirenko concerning isolated singularities. As an application, we show that if $\{f_t\}$ is a topologically $\mathscr{V}$-equisingular family of line singularities, with $f_0$ homogeneous, then $\{f_t\}$ is equimultipl...