On supersolvable and nearly supersolvable line arrangements

We introduce a new class of line arrangements in the projective plane, called nearly supersolvable, and show that any arrangement in this class is either free or nearly free. More precisely, we show that the minimal degree of a Jacobian syzygy for the defining equation of the line arrangement, which is a subtle algebraic invariant, is determined in this case by the combinatorics. When such a line arrangement is nearly free, we discuss the splitting types and the jumping lines of the associated rank two vector bundle, as well as the corresponding jumping points, introduced recently by S. Marchesi and J. Vall\`es. As a by-product of our results, we get a version of the Slope Problem, looking for lower bounds on the number of slopes of the lines determined by $n$ points in the affine plane over the real or the complex numbers as well.Comment: v.3, a version of the Slope Problem, valid over the real and the complex numbers as well, is obtained, see Thm. 1.1 and Thm. 4.

Complete moduli of cubic threefolds and their intermediate Jacobians

The intermediate Jacobian map, which associates to a smooth cubic threefold its intermediate Jacobian, does not extend to the GIT compactification of the space of cubic threefolds, not even as a map to the Satake compactification of the moduli space of principally polarized abelian fivefolds. A much better "wonderful" compactification of the space of cubic threefolds was constructed by the first and fourth authors --- it has a modular interpretation, and divisorial normal crossing boundary. We prove that the intermediate Jacobian map extends to a morphism from the wonderful compactification to the second Voronoi toroidal compactification of the moduli of principally polarized abelian fivefolds --- the first and fourth author previously showed that it extends to the Satake compactification. Since the second Voronoi compactification has a modular interpretation, our extended intermediate Jacobian map encodes all of the geometric information about the degenerations of intermediate Jacobians, and allows for the study of the geometry of cubic threefolds via degeneration techniques. As one application we give a complete classification of all degenerations of intermediate Jacobians of cubic threefolds of torus rank 1 and 2.Comment: 56 pages; v2: multiple updates and clarification in response to detailed referee's comment

Algebraic functions and closed braids

This article was originally published in Topology 22 (1983). The present hyperTeXed redaction includes references to post-1983 results as Addenda, and corrects a few typographical errors. (See math.GT/0411115 for a more comprehensive overview of the subject as it appears 21 years later.)Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Classification of the line-soliton solutions of KPII

In the previous papers (notably, Y. Kodama, J. Phys. A 37, 11169-11190 (2004), and G. Biondini and S. Chakravarty, J. Math. Phys. 47 033514 (2006)), we found a large variety of line-soliton solutions of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili II (KPII) equation. The line-soliton solutions are solitary waves which decay exponentially in $(x,y)$-plane except along certain rays. In this paper, we show that those solutions are classified by asymptotic information of the solution as $|y| \to \infty$. Our study then unravels some interesting relations between the line-soliton classification scheme and classical results in the theory of permutations.Comment: 30 page