On Isolated Real Singularities I

Abstract

This article and its successor concern the topology of real isolated hypersurface singularities. We prove that after attaching a certain number of handles the real Milnor fibres become contractible, with each handle corresponding to a critical point of a morsification; in particular one recovers the classical formula of Khimshiashvili for the Euler characteristic of the Milnor fibres. We then give sufficient conditions for having that the integer homology groups of the real Milnor fibres are isomorphic to the homology groups of a bouquet of spheres. This is followed by a discussion on real vanishing cycles which we define and then demonstrate that, under the validity of our assumptions, they uniquely determine the homology groups of the real Milnor fibres.