Testing zero-dimensionality of varieties at a point

Abstract: Effective methods are introduced for testing zero-dimensionality of varieties at a point. The motivation of this paper is to compute and analyze deformations of isolated hypersurface singularities. As an application, methods for computing local dimensions are also described. For the case where a given ideal contains parameters, the proposed algorithms can output in particular a decomposition of a parameter space into strata according to the local dimension at a point of the associated varieties. The key of the proposed algorithms is the use of the notion of comprehensive Gr\"obner systems.