A note on distinguished bases of singularities

Abstract

For an isolated hypersurface singularity which is neither simple nor simple elliptic, it is shown that there exists a distinguished basis of vanishing cycles which contains two basis elements with an arbitrary intersection number. This implies that the set of Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams of such a singularity is infinite, whereas it is finite for the simple and simple elliptic singularities. For the simple elliptic singularities, it is shown that the set of distinguished bases of vanishing cycles is also infinite. We also show that some of the hyperbolic unimodal singularities have Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams like the exceptional unimodal singularities.