A smoothness criterion for complex spaces in terms of differential forms

For a reduced pure dimensional complex space $X$, we show that if Barlet's recently introduced sheaf $\alpha _X^1$ of holomorphic $1$-forms or the sheaf of germs of weakly holomorphic $1$-forms is locally free, then $X$ is smooth. Moreover, we discuss the connection to Barlet's well-known sheaf $\omega _X^1$.

The arc space of horospherical varieties and motivic integration

For an arbitrary connected reductive group $G$, we consider the motivic integral over the arc space of an arbitrary $ \mathbb{Q} $-Gorenstein horospherical $G$-variety ${X}_{\Sigma } $ associated with a colored fan $\Sigma $ and prove a formula for the stringy $E$-function of ${X}_{\Sigma } $ which generalizes the one for toric varieties. We remark that, in contrast to toric varieties, the stringy $E$-function of a Gorenstein horospherical variety ${X}_{\Sigma } $ may be not a polynomial if some cones in $\Sigma $ have nonempty sets of colors. Using the stringy $E$-function, we can formulate and prove a new smoothness criterion for locally factorial horospherical varieties. We expect that this smoothness criterion holds for arbitrary spherical varieties.