On free deformations of the braid arrangement (Q1378289)

The main result of this paper concerns the (central) hyperplane arrangements between the cones of the braid arrangement and the Shi arrangement in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). Each such arrangement corresponds to a simple directed graph \(([n],S)\) with vertex set \([n]=\{1,\ldots ,n\}\) and edge set \(S\subset \{(j,i):1\leq i<j\leq n\}\) in the following way. It consists of the hyperplanes \(x_i-x_j=0\) for \(1\leq i<j\leq n\), and \(x_i-x_j-x_0=0\) for \((j,i)\in S\), together with the hyperplane \(x_0=0\). The author shows that such an arrangement is free (in the sense of \textit{H. Terao} [J. Fac. Sci., Univ. Tokyo, Sect. IA 72, 293-312 (1980; Zbl 0509.14006)]) if and only if the graph \(([n],S)\) does not contain any induced subgraph of one of the following two types: \((\{i,j,k\},\{(k,j),(j,i)\})\) or \((\{i,j,k,l\},\{(j,i),(l,k)\})\). The underlying arrangement in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) (obtained by setting \(x_0=1\)) is inductively free. Among other results, the author proves that the cones of the extended Shi arrangements are free, thereby verifying part of a conjecture of \textit{P. H. Edelman} and \textit{V. Reiner} [Discrete Comput. Geom. 15, No. 3, 307-340 (1996; Zbl 0853.52013)].