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The Du Bois complex of a hypersurface and the minimal exponent

We study the Du Bois complex $\underlineΩ_Z^\bullet$ of a hypersurface $Z$ in a smooth complex algebraic variety in terms its minimal exponent $\widetildeα(Z)$. The latter is an invariant of singularities, defined as the negative of the greatest root of the reduced Bernstein-Sato polynomial of $Z$, and refining the log canonical threshold. We show that if $\widetildeα(Z)\geq p+1$, then the canonical morphism $Ω_Z^p\to \underlineΩ_Z^p$ is an isomorphism, where $\underlineΩ_Z^p$ is the $p$-th associated graded piece of the Du Bois complex with respect to the Hodge filtration. On the other hand, if $Z$ is singular and $\widetildeα(Z)>p\geq 2$, we obtain non-vanishing results for some of the higher cohomologies of $\underlineΩ_Z^{n-p}$.