Algebraic intersection spaces

Abstract

We define a variant of intersection space theory that applies to many compact complex and real analytic spaces [Formula: see text], including all complex projective varieties; this is a significant extension to a theory which has so far only been shown to apply to a particular subclass of spaces with smooth singular sets. We verify existence of these so-called algebraic intersection spaces and show that they are the (reduced) chain complexes of known topological intersection spaces in the case that both exist. We next analyze “local duality obstructions,” which we can choose to vanish, and verify that algebraic intersection spaces satisfy duality in the absence of these obstructions. We conclude by defining an untwisted algebraic intersection space pairing, whose signature is equal to the Novikov signature of the complement in [Formula: see text] of a tubular neighborhood of the singular set.