We study the homotopy types of complements of arrangements of n transverse planes in R^4, obtaining a complete classification for n <= 6, and lower bounds for the number of homotopy types in general. Furthermore, we show that the homotopy type of a 2-arrangement in R^4 is not determined by the cohomology ring, thereby answering a question of Ziegler. The invariants that we use are derived from the characteristic varieties of the complement. The nature of these varieties illustrates the difference between real and complex arrangements.
In "On the homotopy theory of arrangements," published in 1986, the authors gave a comprehensive survey of the subject. This article updates and continues the earlier article, noting some key open problems.
We prove the existence of lattice isomorphic line arrangements having $π_1$-equivalent or homotopy-equivalent complements and non homeomorphic embeddings in the complex projective plane. We also provide two explicit examples, one is formed by real-complexified arrangements while the second is not.
Recent work of M. Yoshinaga shows that in some instances certain higher homotopy groups of arrangements map onto non-resonant homology. This is in contrast to the usual Hurewicz map to untwisted homology, which is always the zero homomorphism in degree greater than one. In this work we examine this dichotomy, generalizing both results.
A toric arrangement is a finite set of hypersurfaces in a complex torus, every hypersurface being the kernel of a character. In the present paper we build a CW-complex homotopy equivalent to the arrangement complement, with a combinatorial description similar to that of the well-known Salvetti complex. If the toric arrangement is defined by a Weyl group we also provide an algebraic description, very handy for cohomology computations. In the last part we give a description in terms of tableaux for a toric arrangement appearing in robotics.
For a real oriented hyperplane arrangement, we show that the corresponding Salvetti complex is homotopy equivalent to the complement of the complexified arrangement. This result was originally proved by M. Salvetti. Our proof follows the framework of a proof given by L. Paris and relies heavily on the notation of oriented matroids. We also show that homotopy equivalence is preserved when we quotient by the action of the corresponding reflection group. In particular, the Salvetti complex of the braid arrangement in $\ell$ dimensions modulo the action of the symmetric group is a cell complex whi…
We consider a twisted version of the Hurewicz map on the complement of a hyperplane arrangement. The purpose of this paper is to prove surjectivity of the twisted Hurewicz map under some genericity conditions. As a corollary, we also prove that a generic section of the complement of a hyperplane arrangement has non-trivial homotopy groups.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between geometric lattices and the intersection lattices of arrangements of homotopy spheres. When the arrangements are essential and fully partitioned, Zaslavsky's enumeration of the cells of the arrangement still holds. An application of the theory shows that all minimal cellular resolutions of matroid Steiner ideals are bounded subcomplexes of homotopy sphere arrangements of the given matroid. As a result the Betti numbers of the ideal are computed and seen to be equivalent to Stanley's formula in the special case of face ideals of independence complexes…
We consider arrangements of n connected codimensional one submanifolds in closed d-dimensional manifold M. Let f be the number of connected components of the complement in M to the union of submanifolds. We prove the sharp lower bound for f via n and homology group H_{d-1}(M). The sets of all possible f-values for given n are studied for hyperplane arrangements in real projective spaces and for subtori arrangements in d-dimensional tori.
We prove that the mod $2$ Betti numbers of double coverings of a complex hyperplane arrangement complement are combinatorially determined. The proof is based on a relation between the mod $2$ Aomoto complex and the transfer long exact sequence. Applying the above result to the icosidodecahedral arrangement ($16$ planes in the three dimensional space related to the icosidodecahedron), we conclude that the first homology of the Milnor fiber has non-trivial $2$-torsion.
We prove that the complement of any affine 2-arrangement in R^d is minimal, that is, it is homotopy equivalent to a cell complex with as many i-cells as its i-th rational Betti number. For the proof, we provide a Lefschetz-type hyperplane theorem for complements of 2-arrangements, and introduce Alexander duality for combinatorial Morse functions. Our results greatly generalize previous work by Falk, Dimca--Papadima, Hattori, Randell, and Salvetti--Settepanella and others, and they demonstrate that in contrast to previous investigations, a purely combinatorial approach suffices to show minimali…
We study torsion properties of the twisted Alexander modules of the affine complement $M$ of a complex essential hyperplane arrangement, as well as those of punctured stratified tubular neighborhoods of complex essential hyperplane arrangements. We investigate divisibility properties between the twisted Alexander polynomials of the two spaces, compute the (first) twisted Alexander polynomial of a punctured stratified tubular neighborhood of an essential line arrangement, and study the possible roots of the twisted Alexander polynomials of both the complement and the punctured stratified tubula…
There are several topological spaces associated to a complex hyperplane arrangement: the complement and its boundary manifold, as well as the Milnor fiber and its own boundary. All these spaces are related in various ways, primarily by a set of interlocking fibrations. We use cohomology with coefficients in rank 1 local systems on the complement of the arrangement to gain information on the homology of the other three spaces, and on the monodromy operators of the various fibrations.
It is shown that the diffeomorphism type of the complement to a real space line arrangement in any dimensional affine ambient space is determined only by the number of lines and the data on multiple points.
We study representation stability in the sense of Church and Farb of sequences of cohomology groups of complements of arrangements of linear subspaces in real and complex space as $S_n$-modules. We consider arrangement of linear subspaces defined by sets of diagonal equalities $x_i = x_j$ and invariant under the action of $S_n$ permuting the coordinates. We provide bounds on the point when stabilization occurs and an alternative proof for the fact that stabilization happens. The latter is a special case of a very general stabilization result of Gadish and for the pure braid space the result is…
This is a glossary of notions and methods related with the topological theory of collections of affine planes, including braid groups, configuration spaces, order complexes, stratified Morse theory, simplicial resolutions, complexes of graphs, Orlik--Solomon rings, Salvetti complex, matroids, Spanier--Whitehead duality, twisted homology groups, monodromy theory and multidimensional hypergeometric functions. The emphasis on the most geometrical explanation is done; applications and analogies in the differential topology are outlined.
We show that there exist non-trivial piecewise-linear (PL) knots with isolated singularities $S^{n-2}\subset S^n$, $n\geq 5$, whose complements have the homotopy type of a circle. This is in contrast to the case of smooth, PL locally-flat, and topological locally-flat knots, for which it is known that if the complement has the homotopy type of a circle, then the knot is trivial.
The Lefschetz hyperplane section theorem asserts that an affine variety is homotopy equivalent to a space obtained from its generic hyperplane section by attaching some cells. The purpose of this paper is to describe attaching maps of these cells for the complement of a complex hyperplane arrangement defined over real numbers. The cells and attaching maps are described in combinatorial terms of chambers. We also discuss the cellular chain complex with coefficients in a local system and a presentation for the fundamental group associated to the minimal CW-decomposition for the complement.
Link-homotopy and self Delta-equivalence are equivalence relations on links. It was shown by J. Milnor (resp. the last author) that Milnor invariants determine whether or not a link is link-homotopic (resp. self Delta-equivalent) to a trivial link. We study link-homotopy and self Delta-equivalence on a certain component of a link with fixing the rest components, in other words, homotopy and Delta-equivalence of knots in the complement of a certain link. We show that Milnor invariants determine whether a knot in the complement of a trivial link is null-homotopic, and give a sufficient condition…
Kwai Man Fan proved that if the intersection lattice of a line arrangement does not contain a cycle, then the fundamental group of its complement is a direct sum of infinite and cyclic free groups. He also conjectured that the converse is true as well. The main purpose of this paper is to prove this conjecture
Let \A be a complex hyperplane arrangement, and let $X$ be a modular element of arbitrary rank in the intersection lattice of \A. We show that projection along $X$ restricts to a fiber bundle projection of the complement of \A to the complement of the localization $\A_X$ of \A at $X$. The fiber is the decone of a realization of the complete principal truncation of the underlying matroid of \A along the flat corresponding to $X$. This result gives a topological realization of results of Stanley, Brylawsky, and Terao on modular factorization. We show that (generalized) parallel connection of mat…
In this paper, we give a fully detailed exposition of computing fundamental groups of complements of line arrangements using the Moishezon-Teicher technique for computing the braid monodromy of a curve and the Van-Kampen theorem which induces a presentation of the fundamental group of the complement from the braid monodromy of the curve. For example, we treated the cases where the arrangement has t multiple intersection points and the rest are simple intersection points. In this case, the fundamental group of the complement is a direct sum of infinite cyclic groups and t free groups. Hence, th…
We prove that the topological complexity of (a motion planning algorithm on) the complement of generic complex essential hyperplane arrangement of $n$ hyperplanes in an $r$-dimensional linear space is min$\{n+1,2r\}$.
The complement of a complex hyperplane arrangement is known to be homotopic to a minimal CW complex. There are several approaches to the minimality. In this paper, we restrict our attention to real two dimensional cases, and introduce the "dual" objects so called minimal stratifications. The strata are explicitly described as semialgebraic sets. The stratification induces a partition of the complement into a disjoint union of contractible spaces, which is minimal in the sense that the number of codimension $k$ pieces equals the $k$-th Betti number. We also discuss presentations for the fundame…
In a previous work, the third named author found a combinatorics of line arrangements whose realizations live in the cyclotomic group of the fifth roots of unity and such that their non-complex-conjugate embedding are not topologically equivalent in the sense that they are not embedded in the same way in the complex projective plane. That work does not imply that the complements of the arrangements are not homeomorphic. In this work we prove that the fundamental groups of the complements are not isomorphic. It provides the first example of a pair of Galois-conjugate plane curves such that the …
Using a recent result of Bartels and Lueck (arXiv:0901.0442) we deduce that the Farrell-Jones Fibered Isomorphism conjecture in L-theory is true for any group which contains a finite index strongly poly-free normal subgroup, in particular, for the Artin full braid groups. As a consequence we explicitly compute the surgery groups of the Artin pure braid groups. This is obtained as a corollary to a computation of the surgery groups of a more general class of groups, namely for the fundamental group of the complement of any fiber-type hyperplane arrangement in the complex n-space.
In his Ph.D. thesis, Cadegan-Schlieper constructs an invariant of the embedded topology of a line arrangement which generalizes the $\mathcal{I}$-invariant introduced by Artal, Florens and the author. This new invariant is called the loop linking number in the present paper. We refine the result of Cadegan-Schlieper by proving that the loop linking number is an invariant of the homeomorphism type of the arrangement complement. We give two effective methods to compute this invariant, both are based on the braid monodromy. As an application, we detect an arithmetic Zariski pair of arrangements w…
The complement of an arrangement of hyperplanes in $\mathbb C^n$ has a natural bordification to a manifold with corners formed by removing (or "blowing up") tubular neighborhoods of the hyperplanes and certain of their intersections. When the arrangement is the complexification of a real simplicial arrangement, the bordification closely resembles Harvey's bordification of moduli space. We prove that the faces of the universal cover of the bordification are parameterized by the simplices of a simplicial complex $\mathcal{C}$, the vertices of which are the irreducible "parabolic subgroups" of th…
We construct a new class of maximal acyclic matchings on the Salvetti complex of a locally finite hyperplane arrangement. Using discrete Morse theory, we then obtain an explicit proof of the minimality of the complement. Our construction provides interesting insights also in the well-studied case of finite arrangements, and gives a nice geometric description of the Betti numbers of the complement. In particular, we solve a conjecture of Drton and Klivans on the characteristic polynomial of finite reflection arrangements. The minimal complex is compatible with restrictions, and this allows us t…
Let ${\mathcal S}(\R)$ be an o-minimal structure over $\R$, $T \subset \R^{k_1+k_2+\ell}$ a closed definable set, and $$ \displaylines{π_1: \R^{k_1+k_2+\ell}\to \R^{k_1 + k_2}, π_2: \R^{k_1+k_2+\ell}\to \R^{\ell}, \ π_3: \R^{k_1 + k_2} \to \R^{k_2}} $$ the projection maps. For any collection ${\mathcal A} = \{A_1,...,A_n\}$ of subsets of $\R^{k_1+k_2}$, and $\z \in \R^{k_2}$, let $\A_\z$ denote the collection of subsets of $\R^{k_1}$, $\{A_{1,\z},..., A_{n,\z}\}$, where $A_{i,\z} = A_i \cap π_3^{-1}(\z), 1 \leq i \leq n$. We prove that there exists a constant $C = C(T) > 0,$ such that for any …
This note is mostly an expository survey, centered on the topology of complements of hyperplane arrangements, their Milnor fibrations, and their boundary structures. An important tool in this study is provided by the degree 1 resonance and characteristic varieties of the complement, and their tight relationship with orbifold fibrations and multinets on the underlying matroid. In favorable situations, this approach leads to a combinatorial formula for the first Betti number of the Milnor fiber and the algebraic monodromy. We also produce a pair of arrangements for which the respective Milnor fi…
This paper is devoted to the classification of embeddings of higher dimensional manifolds. We study the case of embeddings $S^p\times S^q\to S^m$, which we call knotted tori. The set of knotted tori in the the space of sufficiently high dimension, namely in the metastable range $m\ge p+3q/2+2$, $p\le q$, which is a natural limit for the classical methods of embedding theory, has been explicitely described earlier. The aim of this note is to present an approach which allows for results in lower dimension.
A referee found an error in the proof of the Theorem 2 that we could not fix. More precisely, the proof of Lemma 2.1 is incorrect. Hence the fact that integer cohomology of complement of toric Weyl arrangements is torsion free is still a conjecture. ----- A toric arrangement is a finite set of hypersurfaces in a complex torus, every hypersurface being the kernel of a character. In the present paper we prove that if $\Cal T_{\wdt W}$ is the toric arrangement defined by the \textit{cocharacters} lattice of a Weyl group $\wdt W$, then the integer cohomology of its complement is torsion free.
We show that the equivariant chain complex associated to a minimal CW-structure X on the complement M(A) of a hyperplane arrangement A, is independent of X. When A is a sufficiently general linear section of an aspheric arrangement, we explain a new way for computing the twisted homology of M(A).
We list all the possible fundamental groups of the complements of real conic-line arrangements with two conics which are tangent to each other at two points, with up to two additional lines. For the computations we use the topological local braid monodromies and the techniques of Moishezon-Teicher and van-Kampen. We also include some conjectures concerning the connection between the presentation of the fundamental group of the complements and the geometry of an interesting family of conic line arrangements.
We prove that if $M$ is a CW-complex and $*$ is a 0-cell of $M$, then the crossed module $Π_2(M,M^1,*)$ does not depend on the cellular decomposition of $M$ up to free products with $Π_2(D^2,S^1,*)$, where $M^1$ is the 1-skeleton of $M$. From this it follows that if $G$ is a finite crossed module and $M$ is finite, then the number of crossed module morphisms $Π_2(M,M^1,*) \to G$ (which is finite) can be re-scaled to a homotopy invariant $I_G(M)$ (i. e. not dependent on the cellular decomposition of $M$). We describe an algorithm to calculate $π_2(M,M^{(1)},*)$ as a crossed module over $π_1(M^{…
