Not all free arrangements are $K(\pi,1)$

This is a slightly revised version (with references added in) of a survey article which appeared in the Spring 2005 edition of the MSRI newsletter, the Emissary. The article describes some of the themes from the Fall 2004 MSRI program on Hyperplane Arrangements and Applications.

We present a theory that produces several examples where the homotopy Lie algebra of a complex hyperplane arrangement is not finitely presented. We also present examples of hyperplane arrangements where the enveloping algebra of this Lie algebra has an irrational Hilbert series. This answers two questions of Denham and Suciu.

We construct counterexamples to Yoshinaga's conjecture that every free arrangement is either inductively free or rigid in characteristic zero. The smallest example has $13$ hyperplanes, its intersection lattice has a one dimensional moduli space, and it is free but not recursively free.

In this note we present examples of $K(\pi,1)$-arrangements which admit a restriction which fails to be $K(\pi,1)$. This shows that asphericity is not hereditary among hyperplane arrangements.

We introduce the package \textbf{arrangements} for the software CoCoA. This package provides a data structure and the necessary methods for working with hyperplane arrangements. In particular, the package implements methods to enumerate many commonly studied classes of arrangements, perform operations on them, and calculate various invariants associated to them.

This is the expanded notes of the lecture by the author in "Arrangements in Pyrenees", June 2012. We are discussing relations of freeness and splitting problems of vector bundles, several techniques proving freeness of hyperplane arrangements, K. Saito's theory of primitive derivations for Coxeter arrangements, their application to combinatorial problems and related conjectures.

In the category of free arrangements, inductively and recursively free arrangements are important. In particular, in the former, Terao's open problem asking whether freeness depends only on combinatorics is true. A long standing problem whether all free arrangements are recursively free or not was settled by the second author and Hoge very recently, by giving a free but non-recursively free plane arrangement consisting of 27 planes. In this paper, we construct free but non-re...

We survey interactions between the topology and the combinatorics of complex hyperplane arrangements. Without claiming to be exhaustive, we examine in this setting combinatorial aspects of fundamental groups, associated graded Lie algebras, higher homotopy groups, cohomology rings, twisted homology with rank 1 complex coefficients, and Milnor fibers.

This paper provides an overview of selected results and open problems in the theory of hyperplane arrangements, with an emphasis on computations and examples. We give an introduction to many of the essential tools used in the area, such as Koszul and Lie algebra methods, homological techniques, and the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand correspondence, all illustrated with concrete calculations. We also explore connections of arrangements to other areas, such as De Concini-Procesi won...

We introduce a combinatorial characterization of simpliciality for arrangements of hyperplanes. We then give a sharp upper bound for the number of hyperplanes of such an arrangement in the projective plane over a finite field, and present some series of arrangements related to the known arrangements in characteristic zero. We further enumerate simplicial arrangements with given symmetry groups. Finally, we determine all finite complex reflection groups affording combinatorial...