On the nonnegativity of stringy Hodge numbers

Abstract: We study the nonnegativity of stringy Hodge numbers of a projective variety with Gorenstein canonical singularities, which was conjectured by Batyrev. We prove that the $(p,1)$-stringy Hodge numbers are nonnegative, and for threefolds we obtain new results about the stringy Hodge diamond, which hold even when the stringy $E$-function is not a polynomial. We also use the Decomposition Theorem and mixed Hodge theory to prove Batyrev's conjecture for a class of fourfolds.