Jet schemes, log discrepancies and Inversion of Adjunction

Abstract

We use the theory of motivic integration for singular spaces to give a characterization of minimal log discrepencies in terms of the codimension of certain subsets of spaces of arcs. This is done for arbitrary pairs $(X,Y)$, with $X$ normal and Q-Gorenstein. As a first application, we prove a precise version of Inversion of Adjunction, in the case when the ambient variety is smooth. Another application concerns the semicontinuity of minimal log discrepancies on smooth varieties.