GENERIC VANISHING THEORY VIA MIXED HODGE MODULES

We extend most of the results of generic vanishing theory to bundles of holomorphic forms and rank-one local systems, and more generally to certain coherent sheaves of Hodge-theoretic origin associated with irregular varieties. Our main tools are Saito's mixed Hodge modules, the Fourier-Mukai transform for D-modules on abelian varieties introduced by Laumon and Rothstein, and Simpson's harmonic theory for flat bundles. In the process, we also discover two natural categories of perverse coherent sheaves.