Hyperplane arrangements and Milnor fibrations (Q2450839)

This expository paper is an expanded version of a set of notes for a mini-course on arrangements. An arrangement \(\mathcal A\) is a finite collection of hyperplanes in a complex vector space \(\mathbb C^{d+1}\). The most direct way to understand the topology of such an object is to look at its complement \(M=\mathbb C^{d+1}\setminus \mathcal A\), and the various topological invariants associated to it. More refined objects are obtained by looking at the Milnor fibration. Choose for each hyperplane \(H\in \mathcal A\) a defining linear function \(f_H\). Then the polynomial \(Q=\prod_{H\in\mathcal A} f_H\) defines a smooth fibration on the complement; more generally one can assign multiplicities to each hyperplane and consider \(Q(\mathcal A,m)=\prod_{H\in\mathcal A} f_H^{m_H}\). In the case of a central arrangement, the Milnor fibre \(Q^{-1}(1)\) is a cyclic cover of the projectivised complement. Both this complement and the Milnor fibre are non-compact manifolds, which can be given a boundary in a natural way. In recent years the emphasis shifted towards the study of cohomology jump loci. One has the characteristic varieties for cohomology with coefficients in rank-one local systems and the resonance varieties for homology of cochain complexes arising from multiplication by cohomology classes in \(H^1(M,\mathbb C)\). All these objects are discussed in this well-written paper, with many examples. The main question is whether a given invariant is combinatorially defined. Sometimes this is true for complex arrangements, but not in positive characteristic. The text lists numerous open problems. Three appendices give the necessary background material about cohomology jump loci.