Characteristic Varieties of Hypersurface Complements

We give divisibility results for the (global) characteristic varieties of hypersurface complements expressed in terms of the local characteristic varieties at points along one of the irreducible components of the hypersurface. As an application, we recast old and obtain new finiteness and divisibility results for the classical (infinite cyclic) Alexander modules of complex hypersurface complements. Moreover, for the special case of hyperplane arrangements, we translate our divisibility results for characteristic varieties in terms of the corresponding resonance varieties.