Complete ideals and singularities of space curves (Q1601730)

\textit{O. Zariski} [Am. J. Math. 60, 151-204 (1938; Zbl 0018.20101)] showed that in a two-dimensional regular local ring every complete ideal has a unique factorization into product-irreducible complete ideals. Later, \textit{J. Lipman} [in: Algebraic geometry and commutative algebra, in honor of M. Nagata, 203-231 (1988; Zbl 0693.13011)] generalized Zariski's result in higher dimensions to finitely supported complete ideals. He found a kind of unique factorization for complete ideals into special complete ideals that are associated with finite sequences of infinitely near points to a smooth point, but allows negative exponents. The paper under review deals with the factorization of complete ideals of an excellent Noetherian regular local ring of dimension \(\geq 3\). Sufficient conditions are given in terms of the Lipman multiplicities and linear proximity equalities in order to have Lipman's unique factorization using positive exponents.