A bound for the Milnor number of plane curve singularities (Q2248486)

The Milnor number of a curve \(f=0\) given by a polynomial \(f \in \mathbb{C}[x,y]\) with a singularity at the origin \(O\) is the value \(\mu(f) = \dim_\mathbb{C} \mathcal{O}_{\mathbb{C}^2,O} / \langle \partial f/\partial x, \partial f/\partial y \rangle\). Assume that \(d >1\) is the degree of \(f\), it is known that \(\mu(f) \leq (d-1)^2\) and the equality holds if and only if \(f\) is homogeneous. The paper is devoted to prove that if the order of \(f=0\) at \(O\) is less than \(d\), then \(\mu(f) \leq (d-1)^2 - [d/2]\), where \([\cdot]\) means the integer part. In addition it is shown that this bound is sharp. The author also includes another interesting result which states that if \(d >2\), \(d \neq 4\), the equality \(\mu(f) = (d-1)^2 - [d/2]\) is equivalent to the fact that \(f=0\) have \(d - [d/2]\) irreducible components and each irreducible component goes through the origin. In addition, if \(d\) is even all components are of degree 2 and intersect pairwise at \(O\) with multiplicity 4 and, otherwise, all but one components are of degree 2 intersecting pairwise at \(O\) with multiplicity 4 and the remaining component is linear and tangent to all components of degree 2.