Configurations of flats. I: Manifolds of points in the projective line (Q2486863)

This paper is the first one in a series by the authors concerned with the topology and combinatorics of the space of configurations of flats in standard geometry. The motivation of this paper is the fact that the topology of the space of transversals to convex sets is governed by the strata of the space of affine configurations of points, and the authors study what happens when one considers flats other than zero-dimensional. In this paper, they classify the topological manifolds arising from configurations of points in the real and complex projective lines. In particular, they establish a general setting for the study of the space of configurations of flats and they prove a projective duality among them.