Hyperplane Arrangements and Compactifying the Milnor Fiber

Abstract: Milnor fibers are invariants that arise in the study of hypersurface singularities. A major open conjecture predicts that for hyperplane arrangements, the Betti numbers of the Milnor fiber depend only on the combinatorics of the arrangement. I will discuss how tropical geometry can be used to study related invariants, the virtual Hodge numbers of a hyperplane arrangement’s Milnor fiber. This talk is based on joint work with Max Kutler.