Deformations of Coxeter hyperplane arrangements (Q1584672)

The paper investigates the enumeration problem of regions in several real hyperplane arrangements that can be considered as deformations of the Coxeter arrangement of type \(A_{n- 1}\) (\(x_i- x_j= 0\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\)). In particular, for the Linial arrangement \(x_i- x_j= 1\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\), the number of regions is equal to the number of alternating trees on \(n+1\) vertices, or the number of local binary search trees on \(n\) vertices. The regions of the Linial arrangement also bijectively correspond to sleek posets and semiacyclic tournaments. (A poset on \(n\) vertices is sleek, if it is the intersection of a semiorder with an \(n\)-chain; sleek posets are characterized as not having any of some 4 induced subposets. A tournament on the vertex set \(\{1,2,\dots, n\}\) is semiacyclic, if on every directed cycle more edges go ``down'' than ``up''; semiacyclic tournaments are characterized as not having any of some 6 kinds of cycles of lengths 3 and 4.) Furthermore, the paper studies the number of regions in the following classes of arrangements: generic arrangement (\(x_i- x_j= a_{ij}\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\), where the \(a_{ij}\)'s are generic real numbers); semigeneric arrangement (\(x_i- x_j= a_i\) for \(1\leq i,j\leq n\), \(i\neq j\)); Shi arrangement (\(x_i- x_j= 0, 1\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\)); extended Shi arrangement (\(x_i- x_j= -k\), \(-k+ 1,\dots, k+1\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\), where \(k\geq 0\) is fixed); Catalan arrangement (\(x_i- x_j= -1, 1\), or \(x_i- x_j= -1, 0, 1\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\)); truncated affine arrangement (\(x_i- x_j= -a+1\), \(-a+2,\dots, b-1\) for \(1\leq i< j\leq n\), where \(a\) and \(b\) are fixed integers such that \(a+ b\geq 2\)). Formulae for the characteristic polynomial of truncated affine arrangements are obtained, and from here an amazing analogue of the Riemann hypothesis for the characteristic roots is derived. Some asymptotic formulae are provided for the characteristic polynomials, in particular for that of the Linial arrangement, and hence for the number of regions in the Linial arrangement and for the number of alternating trees. For root systems other than \(A_{n- 1}\), a number of conjectures are made for expected analogues of the theorems proved in this paper.