Qualitative classification of singular points (Q996114)

From the text: ``We study the qualitative classification of isolated singular points of analytic differential equations in the plane. Two singular points are said to be qualitatively equivalent if they are topologically equivalent and furthermore, two orbits start or end in the same direction at one singular point if and only if the equivalent two orbits start or end in the same direction at the other singular point. The degree of the leading terms in the Taylor expansion of a differential equation at a singular point will be called the degree of this singular point. The qualitative equivalence divides the set of singular points of degree \(m\) into equivalence classes. The main problems studied here are the characterization of all qualitative equivalence classes and the determination to which class a singular point will belong to. We remark that these problems were solved in the past only in the case \(m=1\).'' ``The difficulty for this classification problem is that the number of blowing-ups necessary for the analysis of a singular point is unbounded (although it is finite) when this singular point varies in the set of singular points of degree \(m\). To overcome this difficulty, we associate an oriented tree to the blowing-up process of any singular point such that each vertex represents some singular point.'' ``Thus we obtain a successful method for classification which can be applied in principle to the general \(m\)-degree case. As application of our method, we get the precise list of qualitative equivalence classes of singular points of degree 2. Further, we prove that there are finitely many equivalence classes in the set of singular points of degree \(m\), and there is a finite set of quantities, which are computed by a bounded number of operations, such that they determine to which class a given singular point belongs.''