Higher Multiplicities And Almost Free Divisors And Complete Intersections

Almost free divisors and complete intersections form a general class of nonisolated hypersurface and completer intersection singularities. They also include discriminants of mappings, bifurcation sets, and certain types of arrangements of hyperplanes such as Coxeter arrangements and generic arrangements. Associated to the singularities of this class is a "singular Milnor fibration" which has the same homotopy properties as the Milnor fibration for isolated singularities. This memoir deduces topological properties of singularities in a number of situations including: complements of hyperplane arrangements, various nonisolated complete intersections, nonlinear arrangements of hypersurfaces, functions on discriminants, singularities defined by compositions of functions, and bifurcation sets.

Singularities arise naturally in a huge number of different areas of mathematics and science. As a consequence, singularity theory lies at the crossroads of paths that connect many of the most important areas of applications of mathematics with some of its most abstract regions. The main goal in most problems of singularity theory is to understand the dependence of some objects of analysis, geometry, physics, or other science (functions, varieties, mappings, vector or tensor fields, differential equations, models, etc.) on parameters. The articles collected here can be grouped under three headings. (A) Singularities of real maps; (B) Singular complex variables; and (C) Singularities of homomorphic maps.

This is the fourth volume of the Handbook of Geometry and Topology of Singularities, a series that aims to provide an accessible account of the state of the art of the subject, its frontiers, and its interactions with other areas of research. This volume consists of twelve chapters which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of various important aspects of singularity theory. Some of these complement topics previously explored in volumes I to III. Amongst the topics studied in this volume are the Nash blow up, the space of arcs in algebraic varieties, determinantal singularities, Lipschitz geometry, indices of vector fields and 1-forms, motivic characteristic classes, the Hilbert-Samuel multiplicity and comparison theorems that spring from the classical De Rham complex. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory is a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other subjects. Authored by world experts, the various contributions deal with both classical material and modern developments, covering a wide range of topics which are linked to each other in fundamental ways. The book is addressed to graduate students and newcomers to the theory, as well as to specialists who can use it as a guidebook.

Given a homogeneous ideal I and a monomial order, the initials ideal in (I) can be formed. The initial idea gives information about I, but quite a lot of information is also lost. The author remedies this by defining a series of higher initial ideals of a homogenous ideal, and considers the case when I is the homogenous ideal of a curve in P3 and the monomial order is reverse lexicographic. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Free probability theory, introduced by Voiculescu, has developed very actively in the last few years and has had an increasing impact on quite different fields in mathematics and physics. Whereas the subject arose out of the field of von Neumann algebras, presented here is a quite different view of Voiculescu's amalgamated free product. This combinatorial description not only allows re-proving of most of Voiculescu's results in a concise and elegant way, but also opens the way for many new results. Unlike other approaches, this book emphasizes the combinatorial structure of the concept of ``freeness''. This gives an elegant and easily accessible description of freeness and leads to new results in unexpected directions. Specifically, a mathematical framework for otherwise quite ad hoc approximations in physics emerges.

The class of cycle-free partial orders (CFPOs) is defined, and the CFPOs fulfilling a natural transitivity assumption, called $k$-connected set transitivity ($k$-$CS$-transitivity), are analyzed in some detail. Classification in many of the interesting cases is given. This work generalizes Droste's classification of the countable $k$-transitive trees ($k \geq 2$). In a CFPO, the structure can branch downwards as well as upwards, and can do so repeatedly (though it never returns to the starting point by a cycle). Mostly it is assumed that $k \geq 3$ and that all maximal chains are finite. The main classification splits into the sporadic and skeletal cases. The former is complete in all cardinalities. The latter is performed only in the countable case. The classification is considerably more complicated than for trees, and skeletal CFPOs exhibit rich, elaborate and rather surprising behavior. Features: Lucid exposition of an important generalization of Droste's work Extended introduction clearly explaining the scope of the memoir Visually attractive topic with copious illustrations Self-contained material, requiring few prerequisites

An up-to-date survey of research in singularity theory.

Suppose that $R$ is a finite dimensional algebra and $T$ is a right $R$-module. Let $A = \mathrm{ End}_R(T)$ be the endomorphism algebra of $T$. This memoir presents a systematic study of the relationships between the representation theories of $R$ and $A$, especially those involving actual or potential structures on $A$ which ''stratify'' its homological algebra. The original motivation comes from the theory of Schur algebras and the symmetric group, Lie theory, and the representation theory of finite dimensional algebras and finite groups. The book synthesizes common features of many of the above areas, and presents a number of new directions. Included are an abstract ''Specht/Weyl module'' correspondence, a new theory of stratified algebras, and a deformation theory for them. The approach reconceptualizes most of the modular representation theory of symmetric groups involving Specht modules and places that theory in a broader context. Finally, the authors formulate some conjectures involving the theory of stratified algebras and finite Coexeter groups, aiming toward understanding the modular representation theory of finite groups of Lie type in all characteristics.