$q$-Deformation of Chromatic Polynomials and Graphical Arrangements

We first observe a mysterious similarity between the braid arrangement and the arrangement of all hyperplanes in a vector space over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. These two arrangements are defined by the determinants of the Vandermonde and the Moore matrix, respectively. These two matrices are transformed to each other by replacing a natural number $n$ with $q^n$ ($q$-deformation). In this paper, we introduce the notion of "$q$-deformation of graphical arrangements" as certain subarrangements of the arrangement of all hyperplanes over $\mathbb{F}_q$. This new class of arrangements extends the relationship between the Vandermonde and Moore matrices to graphical arrangements. We show that many invariants of the "$q$-deformation" behave as "$q$-deformations" of invariants of the graphical arrangements. Such invariants include the characteristic (chromatic) polynomial, the Stirling number of the second kind, freeness, exponents, basis of logarithmic vector fields, etc.