© 2000 by London Mathematical Society
© The London Mathematical Society
Strange Duality and Polar Duality
Institut für Mathematik, Universität Hannover Postfach 6009, D-30060 Hannover, Germany ebeling{at}math.uni-hannover.de
Received 15 December 1998. Revision received 17 May 1999.
A relation is described between Arnold's strange duality and a polar duality between the Newton polytopes which is mostly due to M. Kobayashi. It is shown that this relation continues to hold for the extension of Arnold's strange duality found by C. T. C. Wall and the author. By a method of EhlersVarchenko, the characteristic polynomial of the monodromy of a hypersurface singularity can be computed from the Newton diagram. This method is generalized to the isolated complete intersection singularities embraced in the extended duality. This is used to explain the duality of characteristic polynomials of the monodromy discovered by K. Saito for Arnold's original strange duality and extended by the author to the other cases.