Unfolding polynomial maps at infinity (Q1586938)

Consider a polynomial map \(f:{\mathbb C}^n\longrightarrow {\mathbb C}\). We can view this as a family of affine hypersurfaces. The goal is to give a description of the topology of this family in terms of easily determined data. These data fall in three classes: 1) the Milnor fibres, 2) the local monodromy for the irregular fiber restricted to each Milnor fiber, 3) the embeddings of the Milnor fibres in a fixed regular Milnor fibre. The main result of the paper is the determination of the first two data in case \(n=2\). Sometimes this suffices for a full description of the topology.