Topology of smoothings of non-isolated singularities of complex surfaces (Q785363)

The paper under review aims at studying \textit{non-isolated} singularities on complex surfaces via the study of the \textit{Milnor fibres} or their boundaries, i.e., the links, of the singularities. The goal is to show that the link of each Milnor fibre of the singularities is orientation-preserving diffeomorphic to a graph manifold, a result well known in the case of isolated singularities. The main result, which is a generalisation of a result in [\textit{A. Némethi} and \textit{Á. Szilárd}, Milnor fiber boundary of a non-isolated surface singularity. Berlin: Springer (2012; Zbl 1239.32024)], is stated as follows. Theorem. Let \((X,0)\) be a germ of complex analytic varieties of complex dimension \(3\) and \(f : (X,0) \to (\mathbb{C}, 0)\) a germ of reduced holomorphic functions such that \(X\setminus \{f=0\}\) is smooth (hence a smoothing of the complex surface \(f^{-1}(0)\) with potentially non-isolated singularities). Then, the boundary of the Milnor fibre of \(f\) is an oriented (real) \(3\)-manifold which can be represented by an orientable plumbing graph. In [loc. cit.], \(X\) is assumed to be \(\mathbb{C}^3\) (thus, in particular, the embedding dimension of each point of the singularities of \(f^{-1}(0)\) has to be bounded by \(3\) in that case). The strategy of proof also follows that developed in [loc. cit.]. A holomorphic function \(g : (X,0) \to (\mathbb{C},0)\) such that \(g^{-1}(0)\) and \(f^{-1}(0)\) intersect in some nice way is chosen. The germ of a \textit{real} analytic subvariety given by \[ \left(\mathscr{S}_k , 0 \right) =\left(\{f=|g|^k\}, 0\right) \subset (X,0) \qquad (k \in 2\mathbb{N} \text{ and } k\gg 2) , \] which has an isolated singularity at the origin, is then considered. It turns out that the link of \(f^{-1}(0)\) and the link of \(\mathscr{S}_k\) are orientation-preserving diffeomorphic, and the desired plumbing graph is then obtained by carefully resolving the singularity of \((\mathscr{S}_k ,0)\).