Discriminants and vector fields (Q4400904)

In the last decades, the theory of discriminants of smooth maps has been investigated as an independent topic and this rich theory has found many deep applications. This well written survey article focuses on the vector fields related to the discriminant and presents many results from a very geometrical point of view. At all places, the credits to original papers are given and an extensive bibliography is included. The authors start with an introductory motivating example for which they compute the discriminant matrix and the important vector fields tangent to the discriminant forming a free basis of all such fields. Guided by this example, they carefully explain the main points of the general theory of discriminant, the explicit constructions of the discriminant and the tangent vector fields, and the geometry of those vector fields for stable maps. They discuss the vector fields in the source and their links to those in the target, and they study the instability locus of the discriminant matrix. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0890.00033].