Toric embedded resolutions of quasi-ordinary hypersurface singularities

We build two embedded resolution procedures of a quasi-ordinary singularity of complex analytic hypersurface, by using toric morphisms which depend only on the characteristic monomials associated to a quasi-ordinary projection of the singularity. This result answers an open problem of Lipman in Equisingularity and simultaneous resolution of singularities, Resolution of Singularities, Progress in Mathematics No. 181, 2000, 485-503. In the first procedure the singularity is embedded as hypersurface. In the second procedure, which is inspired by a work of Goldin and Teissier for plane curves (see Resolving singularities of plane analytic branches with one toric morphism,loc. cit., pages 315-340), we re-embed the singularity in an affine space of bigger dimension in such a way that one toric morphism provides its embedded resolution. We compare both procedures and we show that they coincide under suitable hypothesis.Comment: To apear in Annales de l'Institut Fourier (Grenoble

Noetherianity up to symmetry

These lecture notes for the 2013 CIME/CIRM summer school Combinatorial Algebraic Geometry deal with manifestly infinite-dimensional algebraic varieties with large symmetry groups. So large, in fact, that subvarieties stable under those symmetry groups are defined by finitely many orbits of equations---whence the title Noetherianity up to symmetry. It is not the purpose of these notes to give a systematic, exhaustive treatment of such varieties, but rather to discuss a few "personal favourites": exciting examples drawn from applications in algebraic statistics and multilinear algebra. My hope is that these notes will attract other mathematicians to this vibrant area at the crossroads of combinatorics, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, statistics, and other applications.Comment: To appear in Springer's LNM C.I.M.E. series; several typos fixe