On discriminants, Tjurina modifications and the geometry of determinantal singularities (Q1688234)

The article describes a method to compute discriminant loci of certain essentially isolated determinantal singularities. The description decomposes the discriminant into two components; one component consists of points above which there are determinantal singularities, the other component consists of those points above which there are singularities remaining in the Tjurina transform. The description of the discriminant is then applied to Cohen-Macaulay codimension-2 singularities to discuss some known observations in this new context and to give counterexamples to Wahl's conjecture from [\textit{J. Wahl}, Algebr. Geom. 2, No. 3, 315--331 (2015; Zbl 1322.14056)] relating the Milnor and Tjurina numbers of surface singularities. This is in fact a family of counterexamples: they are non-quasihomogeneous codimension-2 surface singularities with Tjurina number one higher than the Milnor number.