Cohomology of contact loci (Q2135660)

This paper studies the topology of singularities of regular functions on complex algebraic varieties with a help of their contact loci. Recall that an \(m\)-jet on a complex algebraic variety \(X\) is a morphism \(\gamma\colon \mathrm{Spec}\,\mathbb{C}[t]/(t^{m+1})\to X\) of schemes over \(\mathbb{C}\). The \(m\)-th jet scheme \(\mathcal{L}_m(X)\) is the variety parameterizing the \(m\)-jets on \(X\). For a regular function \(f\) on \(X\) and a Zariski closed subset \(\Sigma\) of \(X_0=f^{-1}(0)\) the \emph{\(m\)-th restricted contact locus} \(\mathcal{X}_m(f,\Sigma)\) of \(f\) is the subset of \(\mathcal{L}_m(X)\) consisting of jets \(\gamma\) such that \(\gamma(0)\in\Sigma\) and the composition \(f\circ\gamma\) is equivalent to \(t^m\) modulo \(t^{m+1}\). Now let \(h\colon Y\to X\) be a log resolution of \((f,\Sigma)\) such that \(E=h^{-1}(X_0)\) and \(h^{-1}(\Sigma)\) are divisors with simple normal crossings and \(h\) is a composition of blowing ups of smooth centers. Denote by \(E_i\), \(i\in S\), the irreducible components of \(E\), \(m_i\) the multiplicity of \(f\) at \(E_i\), and \(E_{i}^{0}=E_i\setminus(\cup_{j\ne i} E_j)\). As a technical condition, the authors show that \(h\) can be chosen so that \(m_i+m_j>m\) if \(E_i\cap E_j\ne\emptyset\) for all \(i,j\in S\). Finally, the authors describe a certain unramified cyclic covering \(\tilde{E}_{i}^{0}\) of \(E_{i}^{0}\) of degree \(m_i\). As their main result, the authors construct under the condition that \(X\) is smooth a spectral sequence which converges to the integral cohomologies with compact support of \(\mathcal{X}_m(f,\Sigma)\) and where the first page consists of certain direct sums of integral homologies of the cyclic coverings \(\tilde{E}_{i}^{0}\). In the case \(X=\mathbb{C}^d\) and \(f\) has isolated singularity at \(\Sigma\) the authors note that the first page of their spectral sequence coincides up to relabeling with the first page of the spectral sequence from \textit{M. McLean} [Geom. Topol. 23, No. 2, 957--1056 (2019; Zbl 1456.14042)], converging to Floer cohomology of the \(m\)-th iterate of the monodromy of \(f\). The authors conjecture that in fact the spectral sequences are isomorphic. When \(f\) has multiplicity \(m\) at the origin, the authors show that the cohomology groups \(H_{c}^{*}(\mathcal{X}_m(f,\Sigma),\mathbb{Z})\) are isomorphic to the homology groups \(H_{2(dm-1)-*}(F,\mathbb{Z})\) of the Milnor fiber \(F\simeq \{f_m=1\}\) of the initial form \(f_m\) of \(f\). Motivated by this observation, the authors propose a conjecture that if two germs of holomorphic functions on \(\mathbb{C}^d\) are embedded topologically equivalent, then the Milnor fibers of their initial forms are homotopy equivalent.