Some remarks on free arrangements (Q2234901)

In the paper under review, the authors study some special classes of free hyperplane arrangements and their linkages among each other. The leitmotif for the investigations related to algebraic and combinatorial structures of hyperplane arrangements is motivated mostly by the so-called Terao's freeness conjecture. It states that for a fixed field the freeness of a given hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{A}\) depends only on its intersection lattice \(L(\mathcal{A})\), so it is combinatorial in its nature. We have certain natural classes of free arrangements, for instance inductively free arrangements \(\mathcal{IF}\). Very recently, \textit{T. Abe} [``Addition-deletion theorem for free hyperplane arrangements and combinatorics'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1811.03780}] has introduced some new interesting classes of hyperplane arrangements that have the freeness property, namely divisionally free \(\mathcal{DF}\), which are characterized by the divisibility property of the characteristic polynomials for triples, additionally free arrangements \(\mathcal{AF}\), and finally the so-called stair-free arrangements \(\mathcal{SF}\). The main result of the paper under review can be summed up as follows. Main result. With the notation as above, we have i) \(\mathcal{IF} \subsetneq \mathcal{AF}\), ii) \(\mathcal{DF} \not\supset \mathcal{AF}\), iii) \(\mathcal{DF} \cup \mathcal{AF} \subsetneq \mathcal{SF}\). This containment result is justified by constructing specific examples, for instance the authors exhibit a subarrangement \(\mathcal{D}\) of the rank \(5\) restriction of type \((E_{7},A_{1}^{2})\) of the Weyl arrangement of type \(E_{7}\) that is additionally free, but not inductively free, and which is also not divisionally free. In the last part of the paper, the authors investigate an interesting conjecture by Abe [loc. cit.]. It states that if the characteristic polynomials \(\chi(\mathcal{A},t)\) and \(\chi(\mathcal{A}',t)\) of \(\mathcal{A}\) and a deletion \(\mathcal{A}'\) of \(\mathcal{A}\) factor over integers and share all but one root, then both \(\mathcal{A}\) and \(\mathcal{A}'\) are free. It is known, by a result due to \textit{T. Abe} [Invent. Math. 204, No. 1, 317--346 (2016; Zbl 1341.32023)], that this conjecture holds in dimension at most \(3\). However, the authors provide a counterexample to this claim in dimension \(4\).