On the spectrum of curve singularities (Q4400902)

This paper studies germs of singularities, and addresses the problem of determining when such a germ is a hypersurface. A conjecture of Durfee says that the Milnor fiber of an isolated complete intersection singularity of (real) dimension 2 is negative. In the paper, the case of hypersurfaces (complex curves) of type \(f(x,y)+z^N=0\) is studied, and the negativity of the signature of the germ is proved. What is done is to define properties \(\{ {\mathcal P}(N) \}_{\infty \geq N \geq 2}\) related to the data of the mixed Hodge structure on the vanishing cohomology of the germs. Those properties distinguish the plane curve singularities, and \( {\mathcal P}(N) \) is equivalent to the required negativity for the germ given by \(f(x,y)+z^N=0\). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0890.00033].