Discriminants and Artin conductors (Q256947)

The author studies multiplicities of discriminants for degenerations coming from projective duality over discrete valuation rings. More precisely, he finds computational formulas for the order of the discriminant. He connects this to a conjecture of Bloch by finding relations between the ``different'', i.e. a certain localized Chern class, and the order of vanishing of the discriminant in the sense of projective duality, which is essentially Porteous's formula. The main focus is the case of hypersurfaces, and for discriminants of planar curves he calculates the discriminant precisely.