New free divisors from old

Abstract

We present several methods to construct or identify families of free divisors such as those annihilated by many Euler vector fields, including binomial free divisors, or divisors with triangular discriminant matrix. We show how to create families of quasihomogeneous free divisors through the chain rule or by extending them into the tangent bundle. We also discuss whether general divisors can be extended to free ones by adding components and show that adding a normal crossing divisor to a smooth one will not succeed.