The present paper explores a connection between two concepts arising from different fields of mathematics. The first concept, called vine, is a graphical model for dependent random variables. This concept first appeared in a work of Joe (1994), and the formal definition was given later by Cooke (1997). Vines have nowadays become an active research area whose applications can be found in probability theory and uncertainty analysis. The second concept, called MAT-freeness, is a combinatorial property in the theory of freeness of logarithmic derivation modules of hyperplane arrangements. This concept was first studied by Abe-Barakat-Cuntz-Hoge-Terao (2016), and soon afterwards investigated further by Cuntz-Mücksch (2020).

In the particular case of graphic arrangements, the last two authors (2023) recently proved that the MAT-freeness is completely characterized by the existence of certain edge-labeled graphs, called MAT-labeled graphs. In this paper, we first introduce a poset characterization of a vine. Then we show that, interestingly, there exists an explicit equivalence between the categories of locally regular vines and MAT-labeled graphs. In particular, we obtain an equivalence between the categories of regular vines and MAT-labeled complete graphs.

Several applications will be mentioned to illustrate the interaction between the two concepts. Notably, we give an affirmative answer to a question of Cuntz-Mücksch that MAT-freeness can be characterized by a generalization of the root poset in the case of graphic arrangements.

Given any smooth germ of a 3-fold flopping contraction, we first give a combinatorial characterisation of which Gopakumar–Vafa (GV) invariants are non-zero, by prescribing multiplicities to the walls in the movable cone. On the Gromov–Witten (GW) side, this allows us to describe, and even draw, the critical locus of the associated quantum potential. We prove that the critical locus is the infinite hyperplane arrangement of Iyama and the second author and, moreover, that the quantum potential can be reconstructed from a finite fundamental domain. We then iterate, obtaining a combinatorial description of the matrix that controls the transformation of the non-zero GV invariants under a flop. There are three main ingredients and applications: (1) a construction of flops from simultaneous resolution via cosets, which describes how the dual graph changes; (2) a closed formula, which describes the change in dimension of the contraction algebra under flop; and (3) a direct and explicit isomorphism between quantum cohomologies of different crepant resolutions, giving a Coxeter-style, visual proof of the Crepant Transformation Conjecture for isolated cDV singularities.

Given an affine Coxeter group W, the corresponding Shi arrangement is a refinement of the corresponding Coxeter hyperplane arrangements that was introduced by Shi to study Kazhdan–Lusztig cells for W. Shi showed that each region of the Shi arrangement contains exactly one element of minimal length in W. Low elements in W were introduced to study the word problem of the corresponding Artin–Tits (braid) group and turns out to produce automata to study the combinatorics of reduced words in W. In this article, we show, in the case of an affine Coxeter group, that the set of minimal length elements of the regions in the Shi arrangement is precisely the set of low elements, settling a conjecture of Dyer and the second author in this case. As a by-product of our proof, we show that the descent walls – the walls that separate a region from the fundamental alcove – of any region in the Shi arrangement are precisely the descent walls of the alcove of its corresponding low element.

We use the geometry of the stellahedral toric variety to study matroids. We identify the valuative group of matroids with the cohomology ring of the stellahedral toric variety and show that valuative, homological and numerical equivalence relations for matroids coincide. We establish a new log-concavity result for the Tutte polynomial of a matroid, answering a question of Wagner and Shapiro–Smirnov–Vaintrob on Postnikov–Shapiro algebras, and calculate the Chern–Schwartz–MacPherson classes of matroid Schubert cells. The central construction is the ‘augmented tautological classes of matroids’, modeled after certain toric vector bundles on the stellahedral toric variety.

We determine all finite sets of equiangular lines spanning finite-dimensional complex unitary spaces for which the action on the lines of the set-stabiliser in the unitary group is 2-transitive with a regular normal subgroup.

Bezdek and Kiss showed that existence of origin-symmetric coverings of unit sphere in ${\mathbb {E}}^n$ by at most $2^n$ congruent spherical caps with radius not exceeding $\arccos \sqrt {\frac {n-1}{2n}}$ implies the X-ray conjecture and the illumination conjecture for convex bodies of constant width in ${\mathbb {E}}^n$ , and constructed such coverings for $4\le n\le 6$ . Here, we give such constructions with fewer than $2^n$ caps for $5\le n\le 15$ .

For the illumination number of any convex body of constant width in ${\mathbb {E}}^n$ , Schramm proved an upper estimate with exponential growth of order $(3/2)^{n/2}$ . In particular, that estimate is less than $3\cdot 2^{n-2}$ for $n\ge 16$ , confirming the abovementioned conjectures for the class of convex bodies of constant width. Thus, our result settles the outstanding cases $7\le n\le 15$ .

We also show how to calculate the covering radius of a given discrete point set on the sphere efficiently on a computer.

In this paper, we follow and extend a group-theoretic method introduced by Greenleaf–Iosevich–Liu–Palsson (GILP) to study finite points configurations spanned by Borel sets in $\mathbb{R}^n,n\geq 2,n\in\mathbb{N}.$ We remove a technical continuity condition in a GILP’s theorem in [Revista Mat. Iberoamer31 (2015), 799–810]. This allows us to extend the Wolff–Erdogan dimension bound for distance sets to finite points configurations with k points for $k\in\{2,\dots,n+1\}$ forming a $(k-1)$ -simplex.

Neodymium magnets were independently discovered in 1984 by General Motors and Sumitomo. Today, they are the strongest type of permanent magnets commercially available. They are the most widely used industrial magnets with many applications, including in hard disk drives, cordless tools and magnetic fasteners. We use a vector potential approach, rather than the more usual magnetic potential approach, to derive the three-dimensional (3D) magnetic field for a neodymium magnet, assuming an idealized block geometry and uniform magnetization. For each field or observation point, the 3D solution involves 24 nondimensional quantities, arising from the eight vertex positions of the magnet and the three components of the magnetic field. The only unknown in the model is the value of magnetization, with all other model quantities defined in terms of field position and magnet location. The longitudinal magnetic field component in the direction of magnetization is bounded everywhere, but discontinuous across the magnet faces parallel to the magnetization direction. The transverse magnetic fields are logarithmically unbounded on approaching a vertex of the magnet.

Let $W\subset \operatorname{GL}(V)$ be a complex reflection group and $\mathscr{A}(W)$ the set of the mirrors of the complex reflections in $W$. It is known that the complement $X(\mathscr{A}(W))$ of the reflection arrangement $\mathscr{A}(W)$ is a $K(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B},1)$ space. For $Y$ an intersection of hyperplanes in $\mathscr{A}(W)$, let $X(\mathscr{A}(W)^{Y})$ be the complement in $Y$ of the hyperplanes in $\mathscr{A}(W)$ not containing $Y$. We hope that $X(\mathscr{A}(W)^{Y})$ is always a $K(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B},1)$. We prove it in case of the monomial groups $W=G(r,p,\ell )$. Using known results, we then show that there remain only three irreducible complex reflection groups, leading to just eight such induced arrangements for which this $K(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B},1)$ property remains to be proved.

We show that provided that n is a power of two, any nD measures in ℝn can be bisected by an arrangement of D hyperplanes.

Holmsen, Kynčl and Valculescu recently conjectured that if a finite set $X$ with $\ell n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ that is colored by $m$ different colors can be partitioned into $n$ subsets of $\ell$ points each, such that each subset contains points of at least $d$ different colors, then there exists such a partition of $X$ with the additional property that the convex hulls of the $n$ subsets are pairwise disjoint.

We prove a continuous analogue of this conjecture, generalized so that each subset contains points of at least $c$ different colors, where we also allow $c$ to be greater than $d$. Furthermore, we give lower bounds on the fraction of the points each of the subsets contains from $c$ different colors. For example, when $n\geqslant 2$, $d\geqslant 2$, $c\geqslant d$ with $m\geqslant n(c-d)+d$ are integers, and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{1},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{m}$ are $m$ positive finite absolutely continuous measures on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$, we prove that there exists a partition of $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ into $n$ convex pieces which equiparts the measures $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{1},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{d-1}$, and in addition every piece of the partition has positive measure with respect to at least $c$ of the measures $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{1},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}_{m}$.

Over the past forty years many papers have studied logarithmic sheaves associated to reduced divisors, in particular logarithmic bundles associated to plane curves. An interesting family of these curves are the so-called free ones for which the associated logarithmic sheaf is the direct sum of two line bundles. Terao conjectured thirty years ago that when a curve is a finite set of distinct lines (i.e. a line arrangement) its freeness depends solely on its combinatorics, but this has only been proved for sets of up to 12 lines. In looking for a counter-example to Terao’s conjecture, the nearly free curves introduced by Dimca and Sticlaru arise naturally. We prove here that the logarithmic bundle associated to a nearly free curve possesses a minimal non-zero section that vanishes on one single point, P say, called the jumping point, and that this characterises the bundle. We then give a precise description of the behaviour of P. Based on detailed examples we then show that the position of P relative to its corresponding nearly free arrangement of lines may or may not be a combinatorial invariant, depending on the chosen combinatorics.

We give a bound on the H-constants of configurations of smooth curves having transversal intersection points only on an algebraic surface of non-negative Kodaira dimension. We also study in detail configurations of lines on smooth complete intersections $X \subset \mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{C}}^{n + 2}$ of multi-degree d = (d1, …, dn), and we provide a sharp and uniform bound on their H-constants, which only depends on d.

We prove some vanishing theorems for the cohomology groups of local systems associated to Laurent polynomials. In particular, we extend one of the results of Gelfand et al. [Generalized Euler integrals and$A$-hypergeometric functions, Adv. Math. 84 (1990), 255–271] to various directions. In the course of the proof, some properties of vanishing cycles of perverse sheaves and twisted Morse theory are used.

Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a line arrangement in the complex projective plane ${{\mathbb{P}}^{2}}$ and let $M$ be its complement. A rank one local system $\mathcal{L}$ on $M$ is admissible if, roughly speaking, the cohomology groups ${{H}^{m}}\left( M,\,\mathcal{L} \right)$ can be computed directly from the cohomology algebra ${{H}^{*}}\left( M,\,\mathbb{C} \right)$. In this work, we give a sufficient condition for the admissibility of all rank one local systems on $M$. As a result, we obtain some properties of the characteristic variety ${{\mathcal{V}}_{1}}\left( M \right)$ and the Resonance variety ${{\mathcal{R}}_{1}}\left( M \right)$.

We give a necessary and sufficient condition in order for a hyperplane arrangement to be of Torelli type, namely that it is recovered as the set of unstable hyperplanes of its Dolgachev sheaf of logarithmic differentials. Decompositions and semistability of non-Torelli arrangements are investigated.

If ${{\Phi }_{\lambda }}$ is a master function corresponding to a hyperplane arrangement $\mathcal{A}$ and a collection of weights $\lambda $, we investigate the relationship between the critical set of ${{\Phi }_{\lambda }}$, the variety defined by the vanishing of the one-form ${{\omega }_{\lambda }}=\text{d}\log {{\Phi }_{\lambda }}$, and the resonance of $\lambda $. For arrangements satisfying certain conditions, we show that if $\lambda $ is resonant in dimension $p$, then the critical set of ${{\Phi }_{\lambda }}$ has codimension at most $p$. These include all free arrangements and all rank 3 arrangements.

Given a nonnegative integer $m$ and a finite collection $A$ of linear forms on ${{\mathbb{Q}}^{d}}$, the arrangement of affine hyperplanes in ${{\mathbb{Q}}^{d}}$ defined by the equations $\alpha \left( x \right)\,=\,k$ for $\alpha \,\in \,A$ and integers $k\,\in \,\left[ -m,\,m \right]$ is denoted by ${{A}^{m}}$. It is proved that the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of ${{A}^{m}}$ are quasi-polynomials in $m$ and that they satisfy a simple combinatorial reciprocity law.

The X-ray numbers of some classes of convex bodies are investigated. In particular, we give a proof of the X-ray Conjecture as well as of the Illumination Conjecture for almost smooth convex bodies of any dimension and for convex bodies of constant width of dimensions 3, 4, 5 and 6.

This article presents a study of an algebra spanned by the faces of a hyperplane arrangement. The quiver with relations of the algebra is computed and the algebra is shown to be a Koszul algebra. It is shown that the algebra depends only on the intersection lattice of the hyperplane arrangement. A complete system of primitive orthogonal idempotents for the algebra is constructed and other algebraic structure is determined including: a description of the projective indecomposable modules, the Cartan invariants, projective resolutions of the simple modules, the Hochschild homology and cohomology, and the Koszul dual algebra. A new cohomology construction on posets is introduced, and it is shown that the face semigroup algebra is isomorphic to the cohomology algebra when this construction is applied to the intersection lattice of the hyperplane arrangement.