Equisingularity of families of hypersurfaces and applications to mappings

Abstract

In the study of equisingularity of isolated singularities we have the classical theorem of Briancon, Speder and Teissier which states that a family of isolated hypersurface singularities is Whitney equisingular if and only if the mu^*-sequence for a hypersurface is constant in the family. In this paper we generalize to non-isolated hypersurface singularities. By assuming non-contractibility of strata of a Whitney stratification of the non-isolated singularities outside the origin we show that Whitney equisingularity of a family is equivalent to constancy of a certain selection of invariants from two distinct generalizations of the mu^*-sequence. Applications of this theorem to equisingularity of more general mappings are given.