Homological Algebra and Yang-Mills Theory

The antifield-BRST formalism and the various cohomologies associated with it are surveyed and illustrated in the context of Yang-Mills gauge theory. In particular, the central role played by the Koszul-Tate resolution and its relation to the characteristic cohomology are stressed.Comment: 20 pages in LaTe

Invariants of pseudogroup actions: Homological methods and Finiteness theorem

We study the equivalence problem of submanifolds with respect to a transitive pseudogroup action. The corresponding differential invariants are determined via formal theory and lead to the notions of k-variants and k-covariants, even in the case of non-integrable pseudogroup. Their calculation is based on the cohomological machinery: We introduce a complex for covariants, define their cohomology and prove the finiteness theorem. This implies the well-known Lie-Tresse theorem about differential invariants. We also generalize this theorem to the case of pseudogroup action on differential equations.Comment: v2: some remarks and references addee

Around the tangent cone theorem

A cornerstone of the theory of cohomology jump loci is the Tangent Cone theorem, which relates the behavior around the origin of the characteristic and resonance varieties of a space. We revisit this theorem, in both the algebraic setting provided by cdga models, and in the topological setting provided by fundamental groups and cohomology rings. The general theory is illustrated with several classes of examples from geometry and topology: smooth quasi-projective varieties, complex hyperplane arrangements and their Milnor fibers, configuration spaces, and elliptic arrangements.Comment: 39 pages; to appear in the proceedings of the Configurations Spaces Conference (Cortona 2014), Springer INdAM serie

Characteristic Laplacian in sub-Riemannian geometry

We study a Laplacian operator related to the characteristic cohomology of a smooth manifold endowed with a distribution. We prove that this Laplacian does not behave very well: it is not hypoelliptic in general and does not respect the bigrading on forms in a complex setting. We also discuss the consequences of these negative results for a conjecture of P. Griffiths, concerning the characteristic cohomology of period domains

Variations of Hodge Structure Considered as an Exterior Differential System: Old and New Results

This paper is a survey of the subject of variations of Hodge structure (VHS) considered as exterior differential systems (EDS). We review developments over the last twenty-six years, with an emphasis on some key examples. In the penultimate section we present some new results on the characteristic cohomology of a homogeneous Pfaffian system. In the last section we discuss how the integrability conditions of an EDS affect the expected dimension of an integral submanifold. The paper ends with some speculation on EDS and Hodge conjecture for Calabi-Yau manifolds