Perverse sheaves on semi-abelian varieties

Abstract

We give a complete (global) characterization of $${\mathbb {C}}$$ -perverse sheaves on semi-abelian varieties in terms of their cohomology jump loci. Our results generalize Schnell’s work on perverse sheaves on complex abelian varieties, as well as Gabber–Loeser’s results on perverse sheaves on complex affine tori. We apply our results to the study of cohomology jump loci of smooth quasi-projective varieties, to the topology of the Albanese map, and in the context of homological duality properties of complex algebraic varieties.