A discriminant criterion for an equivalence of an analytic family of plane curve singularities and its applications (Q997920)

For analytic families of plane curve singularities, \textit{O. Zariski} [Am. J. Math. 87, 507--536 (1965; Zbl 0132.41601)] proved a criterion to be equisingular (c.e., discriminant criterion). The author proves a generalization in a different way. Let \(g=z^n+a_1z^{n-1}+\cdots +a_n\) be a Weierstrass polynomial in \(z\), where each \(a_i\) is a nonunit in \({\mathbb C}\{y\}\) for \(1\leqq i \leqq n\) and \(g\) is square-free. Assume that the \(z\)-discriminant of \(g\) is equal to \(\epsilon (y)y^{N(g)}\), where \(\epsilon (y)\) is a unit in \({\mathbb C}\{y\}\) and \(N(g)\) is a positive integer. Under this situation, the author proves that \(N(g)=\mu (g)+n-1\) (Theorem 3.2), where \(\mu (g)\) is the Milnor number of the plane curve singularity \((\{g=0\},o)\). When \(n=\)multiplicity of \(g\) at the origin, the equality was already proved by \textit{B. Teissier} [Astérisque 7--8(1973), 285--362 (1974; Zbl 0295.14003)]. The author proves the equality above by using Teissier's result and \textit{Lê Dũng Tráng} and \textit{C. P. Ramanujan}'s famous result in [Am. J. Math., 98, 67--78 (1976; Zbl 0351.32009)]. By using Theorem 3.2 and Le and Ramanujan's result, he proves a generalization of Zariski's discriminant criterion. Namely, let \(C^t: f_t=f(y,z,t)=z^n+a_1z^{n-1}+\cdots +a_n\) be an analytic family of plane curve singularities for sufficiently small \(t\), where \(a_i=a_i(y,t) \in {\mathbb C}\{y,t\}\), \(a_i(0,t)=0\) and \(f(y,z,t)\) is square-free for each \(t\). The author proved that \(f_t\) is equisingular to \(f_o\) if and only if the \(z\)-discriminant of \(f_t\) is \(y^N\) up to a unit element in \({\mathbb C}\{y,t\}\), where \(N\) is some positive integer not depending on \(t\) (Theorem 3.3). As an application of Theorem 3.2, he also proves a necessary condition for local irreducibility of plane curve singularities. Let \(g=z^n+b_1z^{n-1}+\cdots +b_n\) be a Weierstrass polynomial in \(z\), where each \(b_i\) is a nonunit in \({\mathbb C}\{y\}\) for \(1\leqq i \leqq n\) and \(g\) is square-free. Assume that the \(z\)- discriminant of \(g\) is equal to \(\epsilon (y)y^{N(g)}\), where \(\epsilon (y)\) is a unit in \({\mathbb C}\{y\}\) and \(N(g)\) is positive integer. If \(g\) is irreducible in \({\mathbb C}\{y,z\}\), then \(N(g) \not\equiv 0\) (mod \(n\)) (Theorem 4.1).