Chapter 6 Monodromy

In this chapter we begin the second part of these notes, looking at some ideas based around the concept of monodromy. Very roughly, this is the study of how objects depending on a parameter, and which are locally constant in some sense, change as the parameter moves around a non-trivial path. If this path is a closed loop, the object often undergoes a non-trivial transformation when the parameter returns to its original value. Understanding these transformations can give great insight into the original problem.