Real And Complex Singularities - Contemporay Mathematics

This book offers a selection of papers based on talks at the Ninth International Workshop on 'Real and Complex Singularities', a series of biennial workshops organized by the Singularity Theory group at Sao Carlos, S.P., Brazil. The papers deal withall the different topics in singularity theory and its applications, from pure singularity theory related to commutative algebra and algebraic geometry to those topics associated with various aspects of geometry to homotopy theory. Among the topics on pure singularity theory discussed are invariants of singularities, integral closure and equisingularity, classification theory, contact structures and vector fields, and Thom polynomials. Geometric aspects deal with relations of singularity theory with topology, differential geometry and physics. Here topics discussed include the index of quadratic differential forms, obstructions in fundamental groups of plane curve complements, conjugate vectors of immersed manifolds, exotic moduli of Goursat distributions in codimension three, cobordisms of fold maps, etc. The book concludes with notes from the course on the residue theoretical approach to intersection theory.