Characteristic Cohomology I: Singularities of Given Type

For a germ of a variety $\mathcal{V}, 0 \subset \mathbb C^N, 0$, a singularity $\mathcal{V}_0$ of ‘type $\mathcal{V}$’ is given by a germ $f_0 : \mathbb C^n, 0 \to \mathbb C^N, 0$ which is transverse to $\mathcal{V}$ in an appropriate sense so that $\mathcal{V}_0 = f_0^{\,-1}(\mathcal{V})$. If $\mathcal{V}$ is a hypersurface germ, then so is $\mathcal{V}_0 $, and by transversality ${\operatorname{codim}}_{\mathbb C} {\operatorname{sing}}(\mathcal{V}_0) = {\operatorname{codim}}_{\mathbb C} {\operatorname{sing}}(\mathcal{V})$ provided $n > {\operatorname{codim}}_{\mathbb C} {\operatorname{sing}}(\mathcal{V})$. So $\mathcal{V}_0, 0$ will exhibit singularities of $\mathcal{V}$ up to codimension n. For singularities $\mathcal{V}_0, 0$ of type $\mathcal{V}$, we introduce a method to capture the contribution of the topology of $\mathcal{V}$ to that of $\mathcal{V}_0$. It is via the ‘characteristic cohomology’ of the Milnor fiber (for $\mathcal{V}, 0$ a hypersurface), and complement and link of $\mathcal{V}_0$ (in the general case). The characteristic cohomology of the Milnor fiber $\mathcal{A}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0; R)$, and respectively of the complement $\mathcal{C}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0; R)$, are subalgebras of the cohomology of the Milnor fibers, respectively the complement, with coefficients R in the corresponding cohomology. For a fixed $\mathcal{V}$, they are functorial over the category of singularities of type $\mathcal{V}$. In addition, for the link of $\mathcal{V}_0$ there is a characteristic cohomology subgroup $\mathcal{B}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0, \mathbf{k})$ of the cohomology of the link over a field $\mathbf{k}$ of characteristic 0. The cohomologies $\mathcal{C}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0; R)$ and $\mathcal{B}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0, \mathbf{k})$ are shown to be invariant under the $\mathcal{K}_{\mathcal{V}}$-equivalence of defining germs f0, and likewise $\mathcal{A}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0; R)$ is shown to be invariant under the $\mathcal{K}_{H}$-equivalence of f0 for H the defining equation of $\mathcal{V}, 0$. We give a geometric criterion involving ‘vanishing compact models’ for both the Milnor fibers and complements which detect non-vanishing subalgebras of the characteristic cohomologies, and subgroups of the characteristic cohomology of the link. Also, we consider how in the hypersurface case the cohomology of the Milnor fiber is a module over the characteristic cohomology $\mathcal{A}_{\mathcal{V}}(\,f_0; R)$. We briefly consider the application of these results to a number of cases of singularities of a given type. In part II, we specialize to the case of matrix singularities and using results on the topology of the Milnor fibers, complements and links of the varieties of singular matrices obtained in another paper allow us to give precise results for the characteristic cohomology of all three types.