Minimal log discrepancy of isolated singularities and Reeb orbits

Let A be an affine variety inside a complex N dimensional vector space which either has an isolated singularity at the origin or is smooth at the origin. The intersection of A with a very small sphere turns out to be a contact manifold called the link of A. If the first Chern class of our link is torsion (I.e. the singularity is numerically Q Gorenstein) then we can assign an invariant of our singularity called the minimal discrepancy. We relate the minimal discrepancy with indices of certain Reeb orbits on our link. As a result we show that if the link of A is contactomorphic to the link of C3 and A is normal then A is smooth at 0. This generalizes a Theorem by Mumford in dimension 2. I will give an introduction to the main result (including a very small introduction to contact geometry) in the first half of the lecture and a basic idea of the proof in the second half of the lecture.

Date

Affiliation

Stony Brook University