This volume consists of ten articles which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of some of the foundational aspects of singularity theory. 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. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject. This is the first volume in a series which 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. The book is addressed to graduate students and newcomers to the theory, as well as to specialists who can use it as a guidebook.

This is the second volume of the Handbook of the Geometry and Topology of Singularities, a series which 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 ten chapters which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of some of the foundational aspects of singularity theory and related topics.Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject, and 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.

This monograph lays down the foundations of the theory of complex Kleinian groups, a newly born area of mathematics whose origin traces back to the work of Riemann, Poincare, Picard and many others. Kleinian groups are, classically, discrete groups of conformal automorphisms of the Riemann sphere, and these can be regarded too as being groups of holomorphic automorphisms of the complex projective line CP1. When going into higher dimensions, there is a dichotomy: Should we look at conformal automorphisms of the n-sphere?, or should we look at holomorphic automorphisms of higher dimensional complex projective spaces? These two theories are different in higher dimensions. In the first case we are talking about groups of isometries of real hyperbolic spaces, an area of mathematics with a long-standing tradition. In the second case we are talking about an area of mathematics that still is in its childhood, and this is the focus of study in this monograph. This brings together several important areas of mathematics, as for instance classical Kleinian group actions, complex hyperbolic geometry, chrystallographic groups and the uniformization problem for complex manifolds. "

Singularity theory stands at a cross-road of mathematics, a meeting point where manyareasofmathematicscometogether,suchasgeometry,topologyandalgebra, analysis,di?erential equations and dynamical systems, combinatoricsand number theory, to mention some of them. Thus, one who would write a book about this fascinatingtopicnecessarilyfacesthechallengeofhavingtochoosewhattoinclude and,mostdi?cult,whatnottoinclude. Acomprehensivetreatmentofsingularities would have to consist of a collection of books, which would be beyond our present scope. Hence this work does not pretend to be comprehensive of the subject, neither is it a text book with a systematic approachto singularitytheory asa core idea. Thisisrather a collectionof essaysonselected topicsaboutthe topologyand geometry of real and complex analytic spaces around their isolated singularities. I have worked in the area of singularities since the late 1970s, and during this time have had the good fortune of encountering many gems of mathematics concerningthetopologyofsingularitiesandrelatedtopics,masterpiecescreatedby greatmathematicians like Riemann, Klein and Poincar' e,then Milnor, Hirzebruch, Thom, Mumford, Brieskorn, Atiyah, Arnold, Wall, LeDung " Tran ' g, Neumann, Looijenga, Teissier, and many more whose names I cannot include since the list would be too long and, even that, I would leave aside important names. My own research has always stood on the shoulders of all of them. In taking this broad approach I realize how di?cult it is to present an overall picture of the myriad of outstanding contributions in this area of mathematics during the last century, since they are scattered in very many books and research articles.

This is the third volume of the Handbook of Geometry and Topology of Singularities, a series which 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 ten 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 and II, such as, for instance, Zariski's equisingularity, the interplay between isolated complex surface singularities and 3-manifold theory, stratified Morse theory, constructible sheaves, the topology of the non-critical levels of holomorphic functions, and intersection cohomology. Other chapters bring in new subjects, such as the Thom-Mather theory for maps, characteristic classes for singular varieties, mixed Hodge structures, residues in complex analytic varieties, nearby and vanishing cycles, and more. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject, and 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.

This volume consists of ten articles which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of some of the foundational aspects of singularity theory. 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. Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject. This is the first volume in a series which 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. The book is addressed to graduate students and newcomers to the theory, as well as to specialists who can use it as a guidebook.

This monograph lays down the foundations of the theory of complex Kleinian groups, a newly born area of mathematics whose origin traces back to the work of Riemann, Poincare, Picard and many others. Kleinian groups are, classically, discrete groups of conformal automorphisms of the Riemann sphere, and these can be regarded too as being groups of holomorphic automorphisms of the complex projective line CP1. When going into higher dimensions, there is a dichotomy: Should we look at conformal automorphisms of the n-sphere?, or should we look at holomorphic automorphisms of higher dimensional complex projective spaces? These two theories are different in higher dimensions. In the first case we are talking about groups of isometries of real hyperbolic spaces, an area of mathematics with a long-standing tradition. In the second case we are talking about an area of mathematics that still is in its childhood, and this is the focus of study in this monograph. This brings together several important areas of mathematics, as for instance classical Kleinian group actions, complex hyperbolic geometry, chrystallographic groups and the uniformization problem for complex manifolds.

Vector?eldsonmanifoldsplaymajorrolesinmathematicsandothersciences. In particular, the Poincar' e-Hopf index theorem and its geometric count- part,the Gauss-Bonnettheorem, giveriseto the theoryof Chernclasses,key invariants of manifolds in geometry and topology. One has often to face problems where the underlying space is no more a manifold but a singular variety. Thus it is natural to ask what is the "good" notionofindexofavector?eld,andofChernclasses,ifthespaceacquiress- gularities.Thequestionwasexploredbyseveralauthorswithvariousanswers, starting with the pioneering work of M.-H. Schwartz and R. MacPherson. We present these notions in the framework of the obstruction theory and the Chern-Weil theory. The interplay between these two methods is one of the main features of the monograph. Marseille Jean-Paul Brasselet Cuernavaca Jos' e Seade Tokyo Tatsuo Suwa September 2009 v Acknowledgements Parts of this monograph were written while the authors were staying at various institutions, such as Hokkaido University and Niigata University in Japan, CIRM, Universit' e de la Mediterran' ee and IML at Marseille, France, the Instituto de Matem' aticas of UNAM at Cuernavaca, Mexico, ICTP at Trieste, Italia, IMPA at Rio de Janeiro, and USP at S" ao Carlos in Brasil, to name a few, and we would like to thank them for their generous hospitality and support. Thanks are also due to people who helped us in many ways, in particular our co-authors of results quoted in the book: Marcelo Aguilar, Wolfgang Ebeling, Xavier G' omez-Mont, Sabir Gusein-Zade, LeDung " Tran ' g, Daniel Lehmann, David Massey, A.J. Parameswaran, Marcio Soares, Mihai Tibar, Alberto Verjovsky,andmanyother colleagueswho helped usin variousways.

This book develops the geometric intuition of the reader by examining the symmetries (or rigid motions) of the space in question. This approach introduces in turn all the classical geometries: Euclidean, affine, elliptic, projective and hyperbolic. The main focus is on the mathematically rich two-dimensional case, although some aspects of 3- or $n$-dimensional geometries are included. Basic notions of algebra and analysis are used to convey better understanding of various concepts and results. Concepts of geometry are presented in a very simple way, so that they become easily accessible: the only pre-requisites are calculus, linear algebra and basic analytic geometry.

This is the second volume of the Handbook of the Geometry and Topology of Singularities, a series which 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 ten chapters which provide an in-depth and reader-friendly survey of some of the foundational aspects of singularity theory and related topics.Singularities are ubiquitous in mathematics and science in general. Singularity theory interacts energetically with the rest of mathematics, acting as a crucible where different types of mathematical problems interact, surprising connections are born and simple questions lead to ideas which resonate in other parts of the subject, and 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.