We study pencils of curves on a germ of complex reduced surface $(S,0)$. These are families of curves parametrized by $ \mathbb{P}^1 $ having 0 as the unique common point. We prove that for $w\in \mathbb{P}^1$, the corresponding curve of the pencil does not have the generic topology if and only if either the corresponding curve of the pulled-back pencil to the normalized surface has a non generic topology or w is a limit value for the function $ f/g $ along the singular locus of $(S,0)$, where f and g are generators of the pencil.

Given a non-oscillating gradient trajectory $\left| \text{ }\!\!\gamma\!\!\text{ } \right|$ of a real analytic function $f$, we show that the limit $v$ of the secants at the limit point $0$ of $\left| \text{ }\!\!\gamma\!\!\text{ } \right|$ along the trajectory $\left| \text{ }\!\!\gamma\!\!\text{ } \right|$ is an eigenvector of the limit of the direction of the Hessian matrix Hess$\left( f \right)$ at $0$ along $\left| \text{ }\!\!\gamma\!\!\text{ } \right|$. The same holds true at infinity if the function is globally sub-analytic. We also deduce some interesting estimates along the trajectory. Away from the ends of the ambient space, this property is of metric nature and still holds in a general Riemannian analytic setting.

Let (X, O) be a germ of a normal surface singularity, π: → X be the minimal resolution of singularities and let A = (ai,j) be the n × n symmetrical intersection matrix of the exceptional set of In an old preprint Nash proves that the set of arcs on a surface singularity is a scheme , and defines a map from the set of irreducible components of to the set of exceptional components of the minimal resolution of singularities of (X,O). He proved that this map is injective and ask if it is surjective. In this paper we consider the canonical decomposition

• • For any couple (Ei,Ej) of distinct exceptional components, we define Numerical Nash condition (NN(i,j)). We have that (NN(i,j)) implies In this paper we prove that (NN(i,j)) is always true for at least the half of couples (i,j).

• • The condition (NN(i,j)) is true for all couples (i,j) with i ≠ j, characterizes a certain class of negative definite matrices, that we call Nash matrices. If A is a Nash matrix then the Nash map N is bijective. In particular our results depend only on A and not on the topological type of the exceptional set.

• • We recover and improve considerably almost all results known on this topic and our proofs are new and elementary.

• • We give infinitely many other classes of singularities where Nash Conjecture is true.

The proofs are based on my old work [8] and in Plenat [10].

Let $M\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ be a connected component of an algebraic set $\varphi^{-1}(0)$, where $\varphi$ is a polynomial of degree $d$. Assume that $M$ is contained in a ball of radius $r$. We prove that the geodesic diameter of $M$ is bounded by $2r\nu(n)d(4d-5)^{n-2}$, where $\nu(n)=2{\Gamma({1}/{2})\Gamma(({n+1})/{2})}{\Gamma({n}/{2})}^{-1}$. This estimate is based on the bound $r\nu(n)d(4d-5)^{n-2}$ for the length of the gradient trajectories of a linear projection restricted to $M$.

We prove that the zeta function of an irreducible hypersurface quasi-ordinary singularity f equals the zeta function of a plane curve singularity g. If the local coordinates $(x_1,\dots,x_{d+1})$ of f are ‘nice’, then $g=f(x_1,0,\dots,0,x_{d+1})$. Moreover, the Puiseux pairs of g can also be recovered from (any set of) distinguished tuples of f.