English

A generalization of Milnor's formula

Algebraic Geometry 2020-02-11 v1

Abstract

We describe a generalization of Milnor's formula for the Milnor number of an isolated hypersurface singularity to the case of a function ff whose restriction f(X,0)f|(X,0) to an arbitrarily singular reduced complex analytic space (X,0)(Cn,0)(X,0) \subset (\mathbb C^n,0) has an isolated singularity in the stratified sense. The corresponding analogue of the Milnor number, μf(α;X,0)\mu_f(\alpha;X,0), is the number of Morse critical points in a stratum Sα\mathscr S_\alpha of (X,0)(X,0) in a morsification of f(X,0)f|(X,0). Our formula expresses μf(α;X,0)\mu_f(\alpha;X,0) as a homological index based on the derived geometry of the Nash modification of the closure of the stratum Sα\mathscr S_\alpha. While most of the topological aspects in this setup were already understood, our considerations provide the corresponding analytic counterpart. We also describe how to compute the numbers μf(α;X,0)\mu_f(\alpha;X,0) by means of our formula in the case where the closure SαX\overline{ \mathscr S_\alpha} \subset X of the stratum in question is a hypersurface.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.04009,
  title  = {A generalization of Milnor's formula},
  author = {Matthias Zach},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.04009},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

30 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:37:21.150Z