On plane sextics with double singular points (Q387718)

Any plane sextic having simple singularities (with few explicit exceptions) is conjectured to degenerate to a maximizing one, i.e., to a sextic having total Milnor number 19; it is hence essential to compute the fundamental groups of the maximizing sextics. At present the groups of all irreducible sextics with a singular point of multiplicity three or higher are known (see [\textit{A. Degtyarev}, Topology of algebraic curves. An approach via dessins d'enfants. de Gruyter Studies in Mathematics 44. Berlin: de Gruyter (2012; Zbl 1273.14065)]). In this paper the author computes the fundamental group of five maximizing sextics with only double singular points; in four cases the groups are as expected. His approach relies on the classical Zariski-van Kampen method (expressing the fundamental group of a curve in terms of its braid monodromy with respect to an appropriate pencil of lines) and would apply to other sextics as well, given their equations.