Closed stability index of excellent henselian local rings (Q1882587)

The authors show that the closed stability index of an excellent henselian local ring \(A\) of real dimension \(d>2\) with real closed residue field is equal to \(\frac 1 2 d(d+1)\). Moreover they show that for \(d=2\) the value of the closed stability index can be either \(2\) or \(3\) and give characterizations of each of these values in terms of the relation of \(A\) with its normalization and in terms of the real spectrum of \(A\). The paper is very well written and contains some interesting examples e.g. it is shown that topologically equivalent germs may have distinct values of the closed stability index.