ON MILNOR FIBRATIONS OF ARRANGEMENTS

We use covering space theory and homology with local coefficients to study the Milnor fiber of a homogeneous polynomial. These techniques are applied in the context of hyperplane arrangements, yielding an explicit algorithm for computing the Betti numbers of the Milnor fiber of an arbitrary real central arrangement in C-3, as well as the dimensions of the eigenspaces of the algebraic monodromy. We also obtain combinatorial formulas for these invariants of the Milnor fiber of a generic arrangement of arbitrary dimension using these methods.