Regulators of canonical extensions are torsion:the case of two transversally intersecting smooth divisors

Abstract

This note extends the main result of \cite{IS} 2007 --- torsion of the extended Chern--Simons (regulator) classes of the Deligne canonical extension of a flat bundle with unipotent monodromy at infinity --- from the case of a smooth irreducible boundary divisor to the case of a boundary divisor $D = D_1\cup D_2$ with two smooth irreducible components meeting transversally along a smooth center $Z=D_1\cap D_2$. Let $X$ be a smooth projective variety defined over $\mathbb{C}$, and $U:=X-D$. Given a flat bundle $(E,\nabla)$ on $U$ with unipotent monodromy around the components of $D$ consider Deligne's canonical extension $(\overline{E},\overline{\nabla})$ on $X$. Then the extended Chern-Simons classes $$ c_p(\overline{E},\overline{\nabla})\in H^{2p-1}(X,\mathbb{C}/\mathbb{Z}) $$ are torsion, for $p\geq 2$. These notes were prepared in 2009-2010, and the preprint \cite[2026]{IS2} treats the full normal crossing case via a different approach.