The Enumerative Geometry of Hyperplane Arrangements

Abstract: We study enumerative questions on the moduli space $\mathcal{M}(L)$ of hyperplane arrangements with a given intersection lattice $L$. Mn\"ev's universality theorem suggests that these moduli spaces can be arbitrarily complicated; indeed it is even difficult to compute the dimension $D =\dim \mathcal{M}(L)$. Embedding $\mathcal{M}(L)$ in a product of projective spaces, we study the degree $N=\mathrm{deg} \mathcal{M}(L)$, which can be interpreted as the number of arrangements in $\mathcal{M}(L)$ that pass through $D$ points in general position. For generic arrangements $N$ can be computed combinatorially and this number also appears in the study of the Chow variety of zero dimensional cycles. We compute $D$ and $N$ using Schubert calculus in the case where $L$ is the intersection lattice of the arrangement obtained by taking multiple cones over a generic arrangement. We also calculate the characteristic numbers for families of generic arrangements in $\mathbb{P}^2$ with 3 and 4 lines.