Finite determination conjecture for Mather–Jacobian minimal log discrepancies and its applications

Abstract

In this paper we study singularities in arbitrary characteristic. We propose Finite Determination Conjecture for Mather-Jacobian minimal log discrepancies in terms of jet schemes of a singularity. The conjecture is equivalent to the boundedness of the number of the blow-ups to obtain a prime divisor which computes the Mather-Jacobian minimal log discrepancy. We also show that this conjecture yields some basic properties of singularities; e.g. openness of Mather-Jacobian (log) canonical singularities, stability of these singularities under small deformations and lower semi-continuity of Mather-Jacobian minimal log discrepancies, which are already known in characteristic 0 and open for positive characteristic case.We show some evidences of the conjecture: for example, for non-degenerate hypersurfaces of any dimension in arbitrary characteristic and 2-dimensional singularities in characteristic not 2. We aslo give a bound of the number of the blow-ups to obtain a prime divisor which computes the Mather-Jacobian minimal log discrepancy.