Toric and tropical compactifications of hyperplane complements

These lecture notes are based on lectures given by the author at the summer school "Arrangements in Pyr\'en\'ees" in June 2012. We survey and compare various compactifications of complex hyperplane arrangement complements. In particular, we review the Gel'fand-MacPherson construction, Kapranov's visible contours compactification, and De Concini and Procesi's wonderful compactification. We explain how these constructions are unified by some ideas from the modern origins of tropical geometry. The paper contains a few new arguments intended to make the presentation as self-contained as possible.Comment: 26 page

Equivariant Euler characteristics of discriminants of reflection groups

Let G be a finite, complex reflection group and f its discriminant polynomial. The fibers of f admit commuting actions of G and a cyclic group. The virtual $G\times C_m$ character given by the Euler characteristic of the fiber is a refinement of the zeta function of the geometric monodromy, calculated in a paper of Denef and Loeser. We compute the virtual character explicitly, in terms of the poset of normalizers of centralizers of regular elements of G, and of the subspace arrangement given by proper eigenspaces of elements of G. As a consequence, we compute orbifold Euler characteristics and find some new "case-free" information about the discriminant.Comment: 18 page

Moment-angle complexes, monomial ideals, and Massey products

Associated to every finite simplicial complex K there is a "moment-angle" finite CW-complex, Z_K; if K is a triangulation of a sphere, Z_K is a smooth, compact manifold. Building on work of Buchstaber, Panov, and Baskakov, we study the cohomology ring, the homotopy groups, and the triple Massey products of a moment-angle complex, relating these topological invariants to the algebraic combinatorics of the underlying simplicial complex. Applications to the study of non-formal manifolds and subspace arrangements are given.Comment: 30 pages. Published versio

Eigenvectors for a random walk on a hyperplane arrangement

We find explicit eigenvectors for the transition matrix of a random walk due to Bidegare, Hanlon and Rockmore. This is accomplished by using Brown and Diaconis' analysis of its stationary distribution, together with some combinatorics of functions on the face lattice of a hyperplane arrangement, due to Gelfand and Varchenko.Comment: 13 pages; to appear in Advances in Applied Mathematic