Hyperplane arrangements and Lefschetz's hyperplane section theorem

Abstract

The Lefschetz hyperplane section theorem asserts that an affine variety is homotopy equivalent to a space obtained from its generic hyperplane section by attaching some cells. The purpose of this paper is to describe attaching maps of these cells for the complement of a complex hyperplane arrangement defined over real numbers. The cells and attaching maps are described in combinatorial terms of chambers. We also discuss the cellular chain complex with coefficients in a local system and a presentation for the fundamental group associated to the minimal CW-decomposition for the complement.