A note on De Concini and Procesi's curious identity. (Q931060)

Let \(\Phi\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n\) be a finite root system with base \(\Delta\), and let \(W=W(\Phi)\) denote the reflection group of \(\Phi\). Let \(\sigma_\Delta\) be the positive cone spanned by the set of simple roots \(\Delta\), i.e., \(\sigma_\Delta=\{\sum_{\alpha\in\Delta}c_\alpha\alpha:c_\alpha\in\mathbb{R}_{>0}\) for all \(\alpha\in\Delta\}\). As the main result in this paper the author obtains a new proof of the following theorem of De Concini and Procesi, using a classical result on arrangements of hyperplanes. If \(\Phi\) is crystallographic, the volume of the cone \(\sigma_\Delta\) is \(\nu(\sigma_\Delta)=\prod^n_{i=1}\tfrac{d_i-1}{d_i}\), where \(d_1,\dots,d_n\) are the degrees of \(W\).