Good formal structures for flat meromorphic connections. I: Surfaces (Q993597)

This paper is the first in a series of articles. The purpose of this series of articles is to give some higher-dimensional analogues of the Hukuhara-Levelt-Turrittin decomposition for irregular flat formal meromorphic connections on complex analytic or algebraic varieties. In the first part of the paper, the author develops a numerical criterion for the existence of a good decomposition (in the sense of Malgrange) of a formal flat meromorphic connection on a complex analytic or algebraic variety of arbitrary dimension, at a point where the polar divisor has normal crossings. The criterion is stated in terms of the spectral behavior of differential operators and generalizes Robba's construction of the Hukuhara-Levelt-Turrittin decomposition in the one-dimensional case. In the second part of the paper, as an application, one proves the existence of good formal structures for flat meromorphic connections on surfaces after suitable blowing-up. This result proves a conjecture of Sabbah and extends a result of \textit{T. Mochizuki} [in: Algebraic analysis and around in honor of Professor Masaki Kashiwara's 60th birthday. Tokyo: Mathematical Society of Japan. Advanced Studies in Pure Mathematics 54, 223--253 (2009; Zbl 1183.14027)] for algebraic connections.