Gerbes, simplicial forms and invariants for families of foliated bundles

The notion of a gerbe with connection is conveniently reformulated in terms of the simplicial deRham complex. In particular the usual Chern-Weil and Chern-Simons theory is well adapted to this framework and rather easily gives rise to `characteristic gerbes' associated to families of bundles and connections. In turn this gives invariants for families of foliated bundles. A special case is the Quillen line bundle associated to families of flat SU(2)-bundlesComment: 28 page

Relative cohomology of bi-arrangements

A bi-arrangement of hyperplanes in a complex affine space is the data of two sets of hyperplanes along with a coloring information on the strata. To such a bi-arrangement, one naturally associates a relative cohomology group, that we call its motive. The motivation for studying such relative cohomology groups comes from the notion of motivic period. More generally, we suggest the systematic study of the motive of a bi-arrangement of hypersurfaces in a complex manifold. We provide combinatorial and cohomological tools to compute the structure of these motives. Our main object is the Orlik-Solomon bi-complex of a bi-arrangement, which generalizes the Orlik-Solomon algebra of an arrangement. Loosely speaking, our main result states that "the motive of an exact bi-arrangement is computed by its Orlik-Solomon bi-complex", which generalizes classical facts involving the Orlik-Solomon algebra of an arrangement. We show how this formalism allows us to explicitly compute motives arising from the study of multiple zeta values and sketch a more general application to periods of mixed Tate motives.Comment: 43 pages; minor correction

The Orlik-Solomon model for hypersurface arrangements

We develop a model for the cohomology of the complement of a hypersurface arrangement inside a smooth projective complex variety. This generalizes the case of normal crossing divisors, discovered by P. Deligne in the context of the mixed Hodge theory of smooth complex varieties. Our model is a global version of the Orlik-Solomon algebra, which computes the cohomology of the complement of a union of hyperplanes in an affine space. The main tool is the complex of logarithmic forms along a hypersurface arrangement, and its weight filtration. Connections with wonderful compactifications and the configuration spaces of points on curves are also studied.Comment: 23 pages; presentation simplified, results unchange

Purity, formality, and arrangement complements

We prove a "purity implies formality" statement in the context of the rational homotopy theory of smooth complex algebraic varieties, and apply it to complements of hypersurface arrangements. In particular, we prove that the complement of a toric arrangement is formal. This is analogous to the classical formality theorem for complements of hyperplane arrangements, due to Brieskorn, and generalizes a theorem of De Concini and Procesi.Comment: 9 pages; minor changes, references adde