A counterexample to Purdy's inequality for hyperplane arrangements in projective three-space
Abstract
We record an explicit counterexample to a refined form of Purdy's inequality for essential hyperplane arrangements in projective three-space. Let be an arrangement of hyperplanes in . Let be the number of distinct intersection lines of , and let be the number of intersection points, where an intersection point means a point at which at least three hyperplanes meet. The expected inequality is The classical obstruction is the rank product arrangement, or dually a configuration of points contained in two skew lines. We explain this obstruction first, and then show that it is not the only one. The reflection-arrangement search leads naturally to a subarrangement of the monomial reflection arrangement of type . Looking dually, this configuration is not contained in two skew lines, and has Therefore its dual arrangement has and hence Thus the refined statement excluding only the two-skew-lines obstruction is false.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.08463,
title = {A counterexample to Purdy's inequality for hyperplane arrangements in projective three-space},
author = {Mateusz Michałek and Piotr Pokora},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.08463},
year = {2026}
}