Toward resolution of singularities over a field of positive characteristic. I. Foundation; the language of the idealistic filtration (Q2475486)

This is the first part of a series of papers devoted to the resolution of singularities (and containing joint work with K. Matsuki, as mentioned in 0.6). The goal is presenting a program towards the construction of a resolution algorithm which works for an algebraic variety over a perfect field in positive characteristic. The author's intention is however, to develop a program working in full generality, i.e. including characteristic 0 as well. The intended parts of the complete work are: I. Foundation; the language of the idealistic filtration II. Basic invariants associated to the idealistic filtration and their properties III. Transformations and modifications of the idealistic filtration IV. Algorithm in the framework of the idealistic filtration Part I (under review) establishes the notion and fundamental properties of the \textit{idealistic filtration}, which is considered the main language of this program. Chapter 0 starts with a crash course on the existing algorithms in characteristic 0 and introduces the author's program as a ``new approach to overcome the main source of troubles in the language of the \textit{idealistic filtration}, which is a refined extension of such classical notions as the idealistic exponent by Hironaka, the presentation by Bierstone-Milman, the basic object by Villamayor, and the marked ideal by Wlodarczyk.'' Section 0.2.3 introduces the idealistic filtration and mentions some of its distinguished features as there are: leading generator systems as substitutes for hypersurfaces of maximal contact, construction of the strand of invariants through enlargements of an idealistic filtration, saturation and a ``new nonsingularity principle''. In 0.3 (``Algorithm constructed according to the program'') the author refers to the forthcomimg part IV of the paper as far as termination of the algorithm (in case of positive characteristic) is concerned; he mentions that this question is not yet settled. In 0.5 a brief account of (mainly references to) the history of the problem is given, as well as hints to recent announcements and approaches. The remaining about 70 pages of the paper (Part I) contain essentially the ``local'' ingredients of the program. Below follows (a part of) the author's outline, taken from 0.8: ``In Chapter 1, we recall some basic facts on the differential operators, especially those in positive characteristic. Both in the description of the preliminaries and in Chapter 1, our purpose is not exhaustively cover all the material, bu only to minimally summarize what is needed to present our program and to fix our notation.'' ``Chapter 2 is devoted to establishing the notion of an idealistic filtration and its fundamental properties. The most important ingredient of Chapter 2 is the analysis of the \(\mathcal D\)-saturation and the \(\mathcal R\)-saturation and that of their interaction. In our algorithm, given an idealistic filtration, we always look for its bi-saturation, called the \(\mathcal B\)-saturation, which is both \(\mathcal D\)-saturated and \(\mathcal R\)-saturated and which is minimal among such containing the original idealistic filtration. The existence of the \(\mathcal B\)-saturation is theoretically clear. However, we do not know a priori whether we can reach the \(\mathcal B\)-saturation by a repetition of \(\mathcal D\)-saturations and \(\mathcal R\)-saturations starting from the given idealistic filtration, even after infinitely many times. The main result here is that the \(\mathcal B\)-saturation is actually realized if we take the \(\mathcal D\)-saturation and then the \(\mathcal R\)-saturation of the given one, each just once in this order. In our algorithm, we do not deal with an arbitrary idealistic filtration, but only with those which are generated by finitely many elements with rational levels. We say they are of r.f.g. type (short for `rationally and finitely generated'). It is then a natural and crucial question if the propery of being of r.f.g. type is stable under \(\mathcal D\)-saturation and \(\mathcal R\)-saturation.'' ``In Chapter 3, through the analysis of the leading terms of an idealistic filtration (which is \(\mathcal D\)-saturated), we define the notion of a leading generator system, which \dots plays the role of a collective substitute for the notion of a hypersurface of maximal contact. Chapter 4 is the culmination of part I, establishing the new nonsingularity principle of the center for an idealistic filtration which is \(\mathcal B\)-saturated. Its proof is given via three somewhat technical but important lemmas, which we will use again later in the series of papers.''