Stability of Coassociative Conical Singularities

We study the stability of coassociative 4-folds with conical singularities under perturbations of the ambient G_2 structure by defining an integer invariant of a coassociative cone which we call the stability index. The stability index of a coassociative cone is determined by the spectrum of the curl operator acting on its link. We explicitly calculate the stability index for cones on group orbits. We also describe the stability index for cones fibered by 2-planes over algebraic curves using the degree and genus of the curve and the spectrum of the Laplacian on the link. Finally we apply our results to construct the first known examples of coassociative 4-folds with conical singularities in compact manifolds with G_2 holonomy.