Introduction to the monodromy conjecture

Abstract

The monodromy conjecture is a mysterious open problem in singularity theory. Its original version relates arithmetic and topological/geometric properties of a multivariate polynomial $f$ over the integers, more precisely, poles of the $p$-adic Igusa zeta function of $f$ should induce monodromy eigenvalues of $f$. The case of interest is when the zero set of $f$ has singular points. We first present some history and motivation. Then we expose a proof in the case of two variables, and partial results in higher dimension, together with geometric theorems of independent interest inspired by the conjecture. We conclude with several possible generalizations.