Resonant local systems on complements of discriminantal arrangements and sl_2 representations

Abstract

We calculate the skew-symmetric cohomology of the complement of a discriminantal hyperplane arrangement with coefficients in local systems arising in the context of the representation theory of the Lie algebra sl_2. For a discriminantal arrangement in C^k, the skew-symmetric cohomology is nontrivial in dimension k-1 precisely when the "master function" which defines the local system on the complement has nonisolated critical points. In symmetric coordinates, the critical set is a union of lines. Generically, the dimension of this nontrivial skew-symmetric cohomology group is equal to the number of critical lines.