Number of singular points of an annulus in \(\mathbb C^{2}\) (Q407797)

The authors prove a particular case of the following Lin and Zaidenberg conjecture which states that any algebraic curve \(V\) in \(\mathbb{C}^{2}\) with the first Betti number equal to \(r\) can have at most \(2r+1\) singular points. They prove that if \(V\) is homeomorphic to \(\mathbb{C}^{\ast }\) (in this case its first Betti number is equal to \(1\)), given in parametric form \[ \begin{aligned} x =& t^{p}+a_{1}t^{p-1}+\cdots +a_{p+r}t^{-r}, \\ y =&t^{q}+b_{1}t^{q-1}+\cdots +b_{q+s}t^{-s},\end{aligned} \] \(a_{p+r}b_{q+s},\) \(p,s>0,\) then \(V\) has at most three singular points.