On a quadratic form associated with the nilpotent part of the monodromy of a curve

Minor correction on the metadata of one of the authors. The rest is exactly the same; We study the nilpotent part of certain pseudoperiodic automorphisms of surfaces appearing in singularity theory. We associate a quadratic form $\tilde{Q}$ defined on the first (relative to the boundary) homology group of the Milnor fiber $F$ of any germ analytic curve on a normal surface. Using the twist formula and techniques from mapping class group theory, we prove that the form $\tilde{Q}$ obtained after killing ${\ker N}$ is definite positive, and that its restriction to the absolute homology group of $F$ is even whenever the Nielsen-Thurston graph of the monodromy automorphism is a tree. The form $\t…