The small growth invariants of Goursat distributions

Susan Jane Colley, Gary Kennedy, and Corey Shanbrom

Journal of Singularities
volume 29 (2026), 123-148

Received: 3 December 2025

DOI: 10.5427/jsing.2026.29e


Abstract:

This is the second of a pair of papers devoted to the local invariants of Goursat distributions. The study of these distributions naturally leads to a tower of spaces over an arbitrary surface, called the monster tower, and thence to connections with the topic of singularities of curves on surfaces. In the prior paper we studied those invariants of Goursat distributions akin to those of curves on surfaces, which we call structural invariants. In this paper we study invariants arising from the small growth sequence of a Goursat distribution, and relate them to the structural invariants.


2020 Mathematical Subject Classification:

58A30, 14H20, 53A55, 58A15


Author(s) information:

Susan Jane Colley
Department of Mathematics
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio 44074, USA
email: scolley@oberlin.edu

Gary Kennedy
Ohio State University at Mansfield
1760 University Drive
Mansfield, Ohio 44906, USA
email: kennedy@math.ohio-state.edu

Corey Shanbrom
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
California State University, Sacramento
6000 J St., Sacramento, CA 95819, USA
email: corey.shanbrom@csus.edu