The Morse-Bott-Kirwan condition is local (Q2374082)

The main result of the paper under review establishes that Kirwan's ``minimally degenerate'' condition actually is a local condition. More precisely, if a function is minimally degenerate near each critical point, then it is minimally degenerate. This result enables the authors to obtain a Morse-Lemma-type local characterization of minimally degenerate functions. The main result of this paper in combination with the local normal form theorem enables the authors to deduce that for a Hamiltonian action of a compact Lie group, the norm square of a momentum map is minimally degenerate.