Preliminaries concerning minimal factorization

In this chapter we gather together several results concerning minimal realizations and minimal factorizations that will play an important role in the sequel. Most of these results can also be found in Part II of the book [20]. For the reader’s convenience we have chosen to summarize them here (without proofs). Special attention is given to the notion of pseudo-canonical factorization, which is a generalization of canonical factorization by allowing singularities on the curve.