Jumps of Milnor numbers of Brieskorn-Pham singularities in non-degenerate families (Q1990785)

The authors study the behavior of the Milnor number in a 1-parameter deformation of an analytic germ of special isolated hypersurface singularities. Let \(f_0: (\mathbb C^n,0) \rightarrow (\mathbb C,0)\) define a germ of an isolated hypersurface singularity. Let \(f_s\) define a 1-parameter deformation of \(f_0\). For an open neighborhood \(S \subset \mathbb C\) of \(0\) the Milnor number \(\mu(f_s)\) is constant for \(s \in S \smallsetminus \{0\}\). The difference \(\mu(f_0) - \mu(f_s)\) is called the jump of the deformation denoted by \(\lambda(f_s)\). The smallest non-zero value among the jumps of all deformations is called the jump of \(f_0\) denoted by \(\lambda(f_0)\). If we allow only deformations with non-degenerate Newton boundary then the corresponding smallest value is denoted by \(\lambda^{nd}(f_0)\) and called non-degenerate jump. A formula for the non-degenerate jump of \(f_0\) is given for the case that \(f_0\) has a convenient Newton diagram with only one \((n-1)\)-dimensional face (for instance Brieskorn-Pham singularities): \[ \lambda^{nd}(f_0)=\min\{\lambda(f_s^i) \mid i\in J\} \] Here \(f_s^i(x)=f_0(x)+sx^i\) with \(i=(i_1,\ldots,i_n) \in J\) and \(J\) is the set of all non-zero lattice points below the Newton boundary.