In the geometry of complex algebraic curves, a local parameter for a curve C at a smooth point P is just a meromorphic function on C that has a simple zero at P. This concept can be generalized to curves defined over fields other than (or even schemes), because the local ring at a smooth point P of an algebraic curve C (defined over an algebraically closed field) is always a discrete valuation ring. This valuation will endow us with a way to count the order (at the point P) of rational functions (which are natural generalizations for meromorphic functions in the non-complex realm) having a zero or a pole at P.
Local parameters, as its name indicates, are used mainly to properly count multiplicities in a local way.
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Famous quotes containing the word local:
“To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self- congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.”
—Clifford Geertz (b. 1926)