The dimension of smoothing components (Q1072688)

In this paper, a formula for the dimension of certain irreducible component in the miniversal deformations of an isolated singularity is proved. Let (X,x) be such a singularity and \({\mathcal Y}\to S\) a miniversal deformation of (X,x). Suppose that \({\mathcal X}\to \Delta\) is a 1-parameter family of deformations of (X,x) with smooth general fibre and that X is induced by \(h: \Delta \to S\) from \({\mathcal Y}\to S\). Let S' be the irreducible component of S which contains h(\(\Delta)\). Then the main result of this paper states that dim S' equals the dimension of the cokernel of the natural map \(\Theta_{{\mathcal X}/\Delta,x}\to \Theta_{X,x},\) where \(\Theta_{{\mathcal X}/\Delta}\) and \(\Theta_ X\) are (relative) tangent sheaves of \({\mathcal X}\to \Delta\) and X, respectively. This is conjectured and proved in some special cases by \textit{J. Wahl} [Topology 20, 219-246 (1981; Zbl 0484.14012)]. The proof goes along a general deformation theoretic argument and it can be applied to prove analogous formulas for other problems. Especially, the cases of deformations of compact complex analytic spaces and those of coherent sheaves are discussed.