THE GENERAL QUADRUPLE POINT FORMULA

Maps between manifolds M-m -> Nm+l (l > 0) have multiple points, and more generally, multisingularities. The closure of the set of points where the map has a particular multisingularity is called the multisingularity locus. There are universal relations among the cohomology classes represented by multisingularity loci, and the characteristic classes of the manifolds. These relations include the celebrated Thom polynomials of monosingularities. For multisingularities, however, only the form of these relations is clear in general (due to Kazarian), the concrete polynomials occurring in the relations are much less known. In the present paper we prove the first general such relation outside the region of Morin-maps: the general quadruple point formula. We apply this formula in enumerative geometry by computing the number of 4-secant linear spaces to smooth projective varieties. Some other multisingularity formulas are also studied, namely 5, 6, 7 tuple point formulas, and one corresponding to Sigma(2)Sigma(0) multisingularities.