Resonance varieties of arrangement complements (Q2906445)

This paper is a survey based on the lecture given by the author at the conference ``Arrangements of hyperplanes, Sapporo, 2009''. It is about the resonance varieties of the complement of an arrangement of linear complex hyperplanes:NEWLINENEWLINELet \(M\) be a topological space and \(A=H^*(M)\) its graded cohomology algebra. Denote \(A^p=H^p(M)\). For \(x\in A^1\), multiplication by \(x\) converts \(A\) into a cochain complex denoted \((A,x)\). The \(p\)-th resonance variety \(R^p=R^p(M)\) is the subvariety of \(A^1\) defined as \(R^p=\{x\in A^1\mid H^p(A,x)\neq 0\}\). In this paper, \(M\) is the complement of an arrangement of linear hyperplanes.NEWLINENEWLINEThe paper begins with an introduction to resonance varieties and their well-known properties with sketches of proofs. Then the attention is focused to the first resonance variety: local components, nets and multinets in \(\mathbb{P}^2\), pencils of plane algebraic curves. The main Theorem of Section 3.5 (which is presented with a complete proof) is the characterization of the resonance variety \(R^1\) by characterizing its components. The paper ends with some open problems and conjectures.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 1242.14003].