Cohomological connectivity of perturbations of map-germs

Abstract

Let $f\colon (\mathbb C^n,S)\to (\mathbb C^p,0)$ be a finite map-germ with $n<p$ and $Y_\delta$ the image of a small perturbation $f_\delta$. We show that the reduced cohomology of $Y_\delta$ is concentrated in a range of degrees determined by the dimension of the instability locus of $f$. In the case $n\geq p$ we obtain an analogous result, replacing finiteness by $\mathcal K$-finiteness and $Y_\delta$ by the discriminant $\Delta(f_\delta)$. We also study the monodromy associated to the perturbation $f_\delta$.