We give explicit formulas for the dimensions and the degrees of $A$-discriminant varieties introduced by Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky. Our formulas can be applied also to the case where the $A$-discriminant varieties are higher-codimensional and their degrees are described by the geometry of the configurations $A$. Moreover combinatorial formulas for the Euler obstructions of general (not necessarily normal) toric varieties will be also given.
We study the subvariety of singular sections, the discriminant, of a base point free linear system $|L|$ on a smooth toric variety $X$. On one hand we describe pairs $(X,L)$ for which the discriminant is of low dimension. Precisely, we collect some bounds on this dimension and classify those pairs whose dimension differs the bound less than or equal to two. On the other hand we study the degree of the discriminant for some relevant families on polarized toric varieties, describing their minimal values and the region of the ample cone where this minimal is attained.
We use Matsui and Takeuchi's formula for toric A-discriminants to give algorithms for computing local Euler obstructions and dual degrees of toric surfaces and 3-folds. In particular, we consider weighted projective spaces. As an application we give counterexamples to a conjecture by Matsui and Takeuchi. As another application we recover the well-known fact that the only defective normal toric surfaces are cones.
We study the $A$-discriminant of toric varieties. We reduce its computation to the case of irreducible configurations and describe its behavior under specialization of some of the variables to zero. We prove a Gale dual characterization of dual defect toric varieties and deduce from it the classsification of such varieties in codimension less than or equal to four. This classification motivates a decomposition theorem which yields a sufficient condition for a toric variety to be dual defect. For codimension less than or equal to four, this condition is also necessary and we expect this to be t…
Some of the 124 toric Fano 4-folds contain abelian surfaces but most do not: in a few cases it is not known whether they do or not. By elementary methods, with a little computer help, we exclude some more possibilities.
Let $X$ be a complete $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial toric variety. We explicitly describe the space $H^2(X,T_X)$ and the cup product map $H^1(X,T_X)\times H^1(X,T_X)\to H^2(X,T_X)$ in combinatorial terms. Using this, we give an example of a smooth projective toric threefold for which the cup product map does not vanish, showing that in general, smooth complete toric varieties may have obstructed deformations.
Polynomial algebra offers a standard approach to handle several problems in geometric modeling. A key tool is the discriminant of a univariate polynomial, or of a well-constrained system of polynomial equations, which expresses the existence of a multiple root. We concentrate on bivariate polynomials and establish an original formula that relates the mixed discriminant of two bivariate Laurent polynomials with fixed support, with the sparse resultant of these polynomials and their toric Jacobian. This allows us to obtain a new proof for the bidegree of the mixed discriminant as well as to esta…
We discuss a categorical approach to the theory of discriminants in the combinatorial language introduced by Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky. Our point of view is inspired by homological mirror symmetry and provides $K$--theoretic evidence for a conjecture presented by Paul Aspinwall in a conference talk in Banff in March 2016 and later in a joint paper with Plesser and Wang.
The derived categories of toric varieties admit semi-orthogonal decompositions coming from wall-crossing in GIT. We prove that these decompositions satisfy a Jordan-Holder property: the subcategories that appear, and their multiplicities, are independent of the choices made. For Calabi-Yau toric varieties wall-crossing instead gives derived equivalences and autoequivalences, and mirror symmetry relates these to monodromy around the GKZ discriminant locus. We formulate a conjecture equating intersection multiplicities in the discriminant with the multiplicities appearing in certain semi-orthogo…
This article is the first in a series of two in which we study the vanishing cycles of curves in toric surfaces. We give a list of possible obstructions to contract vanishing cycles within a given complete linear system. Using tropical means, we show that any non-separating simple closed curve is a vanishing cycle whenever none of the listed obstructions appears.
We prove a vanishing theorem for the Hodge number h^21 of projective toric varieties provided by a certain class of polytopes. We explain how this Hodge number also gives information about the deformation theory of the toric Gorenstein singularity derived from the same polytope. In particular, the vanishing theorem for h^21 implies that these deformations are unobstructed.
In this article, we establish the arithmetic purity of strong approximation for smooth loci of weighted projective spaces. By using this result and the descent method, we also prove that the arithmetic purity of strong approximation with Brauer-Manin obstruction holds for any smooth and complete toric variety.
In this paper, using Klyachko's classification theorem we study positivity and semi-stability of toric vector bundles on a class of nonsingular projective toric varieties, known as Bott towers. In particular, we give a criterion of $s$-jet ampleness of line bundles and characterize nef and big line bundles on Bott towers using Bott numbers. We obtain a criterion for the ampleness of discriminant zero semi-stable toric vector bundles on nonsingular projective varieties. We also describe toric subbundles of toric vector bundles on nonsingular toric varieties.
Let $(Y,A)$ be a smooth rational surface or a possibly singular toric surface with ample divisor $A$. We show that a family of ECH-based, algebro-geometric invariants $c^{\text{alg}}_k(Y,A)$ proposed by Wormleighton obstruct symplectic embeddings into $Y$. Precisely, if $(X,ω_X)$ is a $4$-dimensional star-shaped domain and $ω_Y$ is a symplectic form Poincaré dual to $[A]$ then \[(X,ω_X)\text{ embeds into }(Y,ω_Y)\text{ symplectically } \implies c^{\text{ECH}}_k(X,ω_X) \le c^{\text{alg}}_k(Y,A)\] We give three applications to toric embedding problems: (1) these obstructions are sharp for embedd…
Multivariate hypergeometric functions associated with toric varieties were introduced by Gel'fand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky. Singularities of such functions are discriminants, that is, divisors projectively dual to torus orbit closures. We show that most of these potential denominators never appear in rational hypergeometric functions. We conjecture that the denominator of any rational hypergeometric function is a product of resultants, that is, a product of special discriminants arising from Cayley configurations. This conjecture is proved for toric hypersurfaces and for toric varieties of dim…
The 102581 flat toric elliptic fibrations over P^2 are identified among the Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces that arise from the 473800776 reflexive 4-dimensional polytopes. In order to analyze their elliptic fibration structure, we describe the precise relation between the lattice polytope and the elliptic fibration. The fiber-divisor-graph is introduced as a way to visualize the embedding of the Kodaira fibers in the ambient toric fiber. In particular in the case of non-split discriminant components, this description is far more accurate than previous studies. The discriminant locus and Kodaria fibe…
A general problem in complex cobordism theory is to find useful representatives for cobordism classes. One particularly convenient class of complex manifolds consists of smooth projective toric varieties. The bijective correspondence between these varieties and smooth polytopes allows us to examine which complex cobordism classes contain a smooth projective toric variety by studying the combinatorics of polytopes. These combinatorial properties determine obstructions to a complex cobordism class containing a smooth projective toric variety. However, the obstructions are only necessary conditio…
The main result of this paper is a structural theorem for projective Q-factorial toric varieties X in P^N, covered by lines. We prove that there exists a toric fibration f: X -> Z, locally trivial in the Zariski topology, with fiber a product of projective joins. All lines in X intersecting the open subset isomorphic to the torus, are contained in some fiber of f. This characterization has a geometrical application to dual defective toric varieties, and a combinatorial application to discriminants of lattice subsets. We prove that X has positive dual defect if and only if it has an elementary …
We present a formula for the degree of the discriminant of a smooth projective toric variety associated to a lattice polytope P, in terms of the number of integral points in the interior of dilates of faces of dimension greater or equal than $\lceil \frac {\dim P} 2 \rceil$.
The purpose of this short note is to prove a formula for the Chern-Mather classes of a toric variety in terms of its orbits and the local Euler obstructions at general points of each orbit (Theorem 2). We use the general definition of the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes (see [7]) and their special expression in case of a toric variety (see [2]). As a corollary, we obtain a formula by Matsui-Takeuchi [8, Corollary 1.6]. Alternatively, one could deduce the formula of Theorem 2 from the Matsui-Takeuchi formula, by using our general result [11, Theoreme 3] for the degree of the polar varieties i…
Given a polarized manifold there are obstructions for asymptotic Chow semistability described as integral invariants. One of them is an obstruction to the existence for the first Chern class of the polarization to admit a constant scalar curvature Kähler (cscK) metric. A natural question is whether or not the other obstructions are linearly dependent on the obstruction to the existence of a cscK metric. The purpose of this paper is to see that this is not the case by exhibiting toric Fano threefolds in which these obstructions span at least two dimension. To see this we show that on toric Fano…
We determine the Euclidean distance degree of a projective toric variety. This extends the formula of Matsui and Takeuchi for the degree of the $A$-discriminant in terms of Euler obstructions. Our primary goal is the development of reliable algorithmic tools for computing the points on a real toric variety that are closest to a given data point.
New formulas are given for Chow forms, discriminants and resultants arising from (not necessarily normal) toric varieties of codimension 2. Exact descriptions are also given for the secondary polygon and for the Newton polygon of the discriminant.
ECH capacities are rich obstructions to symplectic embeddings in 4-dimensions that have also been seen to arise in the context of algebraic positivity for (possibly singular) projective surfaces. We extend this connection to relate general convex toric domains on the symplectic side with towers of polarised toric surfaces on the algebraic side, and then use this perspective to show that the sub-leading asymptotics of ECH capacities for all convex and concave toric domains are $O(1)$. We obtain sufficient criteria for when the sub-leading asymptotics converge in this context, generalising resul…
We resume the study initiated in \cite{CL}. For a generic curve $C$ in an ample linear system $\vert \mathcal{L} \vert$ on a toric surface $X$, a vanishing cycle of $C$ is an isotopy class of simple closed curve that can be contracted to a point along a degeneration of $C$ to a nodal curve in $\vert \mathcal{L} \vert$. The obstructions that prevent a simple closed curve in $C$ from being a vanishing cycle are encoded by the adjoint line bundle $K_X \otimes \mathcal{L}$. In this paper, we consider the linear systems carrying the two simplest types of obstruction. Geometrically, these obstructio…
For a system of polynomial equations, whose coefficients depend on parameters, the Newton polyhedron of its discriminant is computed in terms of the Newton polyhedra of the coefficients. This leads to an explicit formula (involving mixed fiber polyhedra and Euler obstructions of toric varieties) in the unmixed case, suggests certain open questions in general, and generalizes a number of similar known results. The argument is based on a formula for the support function of a mixed fiber body, which also suggests a new proof for existence of mixed fiber bodies.
We study the maximum likelihood estimation problem for several classes of toric Fano models. We start by exploring the maximum likelihood degree for all $2$-dimensional Gorenstein toric Fano varieties. We show that the ML degree is equal to the degree of the surface in every case except for the quintic del Pezzo surface with two ordinary double points and provide explicit expressions that allow one to compute the maximum likelihood estimate in closed form whenever the ML degree is less than 5. We then explore the reasons for the ML degree drop using $A$-discriminants and intersection theory. F…
We study the linear syzygies of a homogeneous ideal I in a polynomial ring S, focusing on the graded betti numbers b_(i,i+1) = dim_k Tor_i(S/I, k)_(i+1). For a variety X and divisor D with S = Sym(H^0(D)*), what conditions on D ensure that b_(i,i+1) is nonzero? Eisenbud has shown that a decomposition D = A + B such that A and B have at least two sections gives rise to determinantal equations (and corresponding syzygies) in I_X; and conjectured that if I_2 is generated by quadrics of rank at most 4, then the last nonvanishing b_(i,i+1) is a consequence of such equations. We describe obstruction…
We study geometric transitions for topological strings on compact Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in toric varieties. Large N duality predicts an equivalence between topological open and closed string theories connected by an extremal transition. We develop new open string enumerative techniques and perform a high precision genus zero test of this conjecture for a certain class of toric extremal transitions. Our approach is based on a) an open string version of Gromov-Witten theory with convex obstruction bundle and b) an extension of Chern-Simons theory treating the framing as a formal variable.
What polynomial in the coefficients of a system of algebraic equations should be called its discriminant? We prove a package of facts that provide a possible answer. Let us call a system typical, if the homeomorphic type of its set of solutions does not change as we perturb its (non-zero) coefficients. The set of all atypical systems turns out to be a hypersurface in the space of all systems of k equations in n variables, whose monomials are contained in k given finite sets. This hypersurface B contains all systems that have a singular solution, this stratum is conventionally called the discri…
