We study deformations of affine toric varieties. The entire deformation theory of these singularities is encoded by the so-called versal deformation. The main goal of our paper is to construct the homogeneous part of some degree -R of this, i.e. a maximal deformation with prescribed tangent space T^1(-R) for a given character R. To this aim we use the polyhedron obtained by cutting the rational cone defining the affine singularity with the hyperplane defined by [R=1]. Under some length assumptions on the edges of this polyhedron, we provide the versal deformation for primitive degrees R.
Toric geometry provides a bridge between algebraic geometry and combinatorics of fans and polytopes. For each polarized toric variety (X,L) we have associated a polytope P. In this thesis we use this correspondence to study birational geometry for toric varieties. To this end, we address subjects such as Minimal Model Program, Mori fiber spaces, and chamber structures on the cone of effective divisors. We translate some results from these theories to the combinatorics of polytopes and use them to get structure theorems on space of polytopes. In particular, we treat toric varieties known as 2-F…
These notes are based on a series of lectures given by the author at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. Addressed topics include affine and projective toric varieties, abstract normal toric varieties from fans, divisors on toric varieties and Cox's construction of a toric variety as a GIT quotient. We emphasize the role of toric varieties in solving systems of polynomial equations and provide many computational examples using the Julia package Oscar.jl.
Bernardi and Tirabassi show the existence of full strong exceptional collections consisting of line bundles on smooth toric Fano $3$-folds under assuming Bondal's conjecture, which states that the Frobenius push-forward of the structure sheaf $\mc O_X$ generates the derived category $D^b(X)$ for smooth projective toric varieties $X$. In this article, we show Bondal's conjecture for smooth toric Fano $3$-folds and also improve their result, using birational geometry.
We discuss an experimental approach to open problems in toric geometry: are smooth projective toric varieties (i) projectively normal and (ii) defined by degree 2 equations? We discuss the creation of lattice polytopes defining smooth toric varieties as well as algorithms checking properties (i) and (ii) and further potential properties, in Particular a weaker version of (ii) asking for scheme-theoretic definition in degree 2.
We discuss the behavior of Landau-Ginzburg models for toric orbifolds near the large volume limit. This enables us to express mirror symmetry as an isomorphism of Frobenius manifolds which aquire logarithmic poles along a boundary divisor. If the toric orbifold admits a crepant resolution we construct a global moduli space on the B-side and show that the associated tt^*-geometry exists globally.
The real solutions to a system of sparse polynomial equations may be realized as a fiber of a projection map from a toric variety. When the toric variety is orientable, the degree of this map is a lower bound for the number of real solutions to the system of equations. We strengthen previous work by characterizing when the toric variety is orientable. This is based on work of Nakayama and Nishimura, who characterized the orientability of smooth real toric varieties.
We present some applications of the deformation theory of toric Fano varieties to K-(semi/poly)stability of Fano varieties. First, we present two examples of K-polystable toric Fano 3-fold with obstructed deformations. In one case, the K-moduli spaces and stacks are reducible near the closed point associated to the toric Fano 3-fold, while in the other they are non-reduced near the closed point associated to the toric Fano 3-fold. Second, we study K-stability of the general members of two deformation families of smooth Fano 3-folds by building degenerations to K-polystable toric Fano 3-folds.
We announce a factorization result for equivariant birational morphisms between toric 4-folds whose source is Fano: such a morphism is always a composite of blow-ups along smooth invariant centers. Moreover, we show with a counterexample that, differently from the 3-dimensional case, even if both source and target are Fano, the intermediate varieties can not be chosen Fano.
In this paper we will introduce a certain type of morphisms of log schemes (in the sense of Fontaine, Illusie, and Kato) and investigate their moduli. Then by applying this we define a notion of toric algebraic stacks over arbitrary schemes, which may be regarded as torus embeddings within the framework of algebraic stacks, and study some basic properties. Furthermore, we study the stack-theoretic analogue of toroidal embeddings.
Toric geometry provides a bridge between the theory of polytopes and algebraic geometry: one can associate to each lattice polytope a polarized toric variety. In this thesis we explore this correspondence to classify smooth lattice polytopes having small degree, extending a classification provided by Dickenstein, Di Rocco and Piene. Our approach consists in interpreting the degree of a polytope as a geometric invariant of the corresponding polarized variety, and then applying techniques from Adjunction Theory and Mori Theory. In the opposite direction, we use the combinatorics of fans to descr…
We study integral dlt models of a proper C((t))-variety X along a toric stratum of the special fiber. We prove that the associated Berkovich retraction - from the non-archimedean analytification of X onto the dual complex of the model - is an affinoid torus fibration around the simplex corresponding to the toric stratum, which extends results from Nicaise-Xu-Yu. This allows us to construct new types of non-archimedean retractions for maximally degenerate families of quartic K3 surfaces and quintic 3-folds, by gluing several non-archimedean SYZ fibrations, each one toric along a codimension one…
This paper proposes some material towards a theory of general toric varieties without the assumption of normality. Their combinatorial description involves a fan to which is attached a set of semigroups subjected to gluing-up conditions. In particular it contains a combinatorial construction of the blowing up of a sheaf of monomial ideals on a toric variety. In the second part it is shown that over an algebraically closed base field of zero characteristic the Semple-Nash modification of a general toric variety is isomorphic to the blowing up of the sheaf of logarithmic jacobian ideals and that…
In stochastic analysis, a standard method to study a path is to work with its signature. This is a sequence of tensors of different order that encode information of the path in a compact form. When the path varies, such signatures parametrize an algebraic variety in the tensor space. The study of these signature varieties builds a bridge between algebraic geometry and stochastics, and allows a fruitful exchange of techniques, ideas, conjectures and solutions. In this paper we study the signature varieties of two very different classes of paths. The class of rough paths is a natural extension o…
We study the secant line variety of the Segre product of projective spaces using special cumulant coordinates adapted for secant varieties. We show that the secant variety is covered by open normal toric varieties. We prove that in cumulant coordinates its ideal is generated by binomial quadrics. We present new results on the local structure of the secant variety. In particular, we show that it has rational singularities and we give a description of the singular locus. We also classify all secant varieties that are Gorenstein. Moreover, generalizing (Sturmfels and Zwiernik 2012), we obtain ana…
In this paper we generalize correspondence theorems of Mikhalkin and Nishinou-Siebert providing a correspondence between algebraic and parameterized tropical curves. We also give a description of a canonical tropicalization procedure for algebraic curves motivated by Berkovich's construction of skeletons of analytic curves. Under certain assumptions, we construct a one-to-one correspondence between algebraic curves satisfying toric constraints and certain combinatorially defined objects, called "stacky tropical reductions", that can be enumerated in terms of tropical curves satisfying linear c…
This paper will appear in the Proceedings of the 1995 Santa Cruz Summer Institute. The paper is a survey of recent developments in the theory of toric varieties, including new constructions of toric varieties and relations to symplectic geometry, combinatorics and mirror symmetry.
An irrational toric variety X is an analytic subset of the simplex associated to a finite configuration of real vectors. The positive torus acts on X by translation, and we consider limits of sequences of these translations. Our main result identifies all possible Hausdorff limits of translations of X as toric degenerations using elementary methods and the geometry of the secondary fan of the vector configuration. This generalizes work of Garcia-Puente et al., who used algebraic geometry and work of Kapranov, Sturmfels, and Zelevinsky, when the vectors were integral.
Classical toric varieties are among the simplest objects in algebraic geometry. They arise in an elementary fashion as varieties parametrized by monomials whose exponents are a finite subset $\mathcal{A}$ of $\mathbb{Z}^n$. They may also be constructed from a rational fan $Σ$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. The combinatorics of the set $\mathcal{A}$ or fan $Σ$ control the geometry of the associated toric variety. These toric varieties have an action of an algebraic torus with a dense orbit. Applications of algebraic geometry in geometric modeling and algebraic statistics have long studied the nonnegative r…
We study the normalized volume of toric singularities. As it turns out, there is a close relation to the notion of (non-symmetric) Mahler volume from convex geometry. This observation allows us to use standard tools from convex geometry, such as the Blaschke-Santaló inequality and Radon's theorem to prove non-trivial facts about the normalized volume in the toric setting. For example, we prove that for every $ε> 0$ there are only finitely many $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein toric singularities with normalized volume at least $ε$. From this result, it directly follows that there are also only finitely…
This note presents two observations which have in common that they lie at the boundary of toric geometry. The first one because it concerns the deformation of affine toric varieties into non toric germs in order to understand how to avoid some ramification problems arising in the study of local uniformization in positive characteristic, and the second one because it uses limits of projective systems of equivariant birational maps of toric varieties to study the space of additive preorders on ${\mathbf Z}^r$ for $r\geq 2$.
We present some results on projective toric varieties which are relevant in Diophantine geometry. We interpret and study several invariants attached to these varieties in geometrical and combinatorial terms. We also give a Bézout theorem for the Chow weights of projective varieties and an application to the theorem of successive minima.
Geometric properties of schemes obtained by gluing algebras of monoids, including separation and finiteness properties, irreducibility, normality, catenarity, dimension, and Serre's properties (S_k) and (R_k), are investigated. This is used to show how the geometry of a toric scheme over an arbitrary base is influenced by the geometry of the base.
We develop a theory of multi-stage degenerations of toric varieties over finite rank valuation rings, extending the Mumford--Gubler theory in rank one. Such degenerations are constructed from fan-like structures over totally ordered abelian groups of finite rank. Our main theorem describes the geometry of successive special fibers in the degeneration in terms of the polyhedral geometry of a system of recession complexes associated to the fan.
This is an expository paper in which we define projective GIT quotients and introduce toric varieties from this perspective. It is intended primarily for readers who are learning either invariant theory or toric geometry for the first time.
We introduce toric arrangements, essentially finite families of codimension 1 subtori of a torus or of their cosets, as a periodic generalization of hyperplane arrangements, compute cohomology of the complement of such an arrangement and apply the theory to give a geometric interpretation of the formulas of Brion--Szenes--Vergne counting the number of integral points in polytopes.
It is pretty well-known that toric Fano varieties of dimension k with terminal singularities correspond to convex lattice polytopes P in R^k of positive finite volume, such that intersection of P and Z^k consists of the point 0 and vertices of P. Likewise, Q-factorial terminal toric singularities essentially correspond to lattice simplexes with no lattice points inside or on the boundary (except the vertices). There have been a lot work, especially in the last 20 years or so on classification of these objects. The main goal of this paper is to bring together these and related results, that are…
We construct polyhedral families of valuations on the branching algebra of a morphism of reductive groups. This establishes a connection between the combinatorial rules for studying a branching problem and the tropical geometry of the branching algebra. In the special case when the branching problem comes from the inclusion of a Levi subgroup or a diagonal subgroup, we use the dual canonical basis of Lusztig and Kashiwara to build toric deformations of the branching algebra.
Associated to any graph is a toric ideal whose generators record relations among the cuts of the graph. We study these ideals and the geometry of the corresponding toric varieties. Our theorems and conjectures relate the combinatorial structure of the graph and the corresponding cut polytope to algebraic properties of the ideal. Cut ideals generalize toric ideals arising in phylogenetics and the study of contingency tables.
A study of the relation between a noetherian local domain with a given valuation and its associated graded ring with respect to the valuation, which in some cases is an esentially toric variety, possibly of infinite embedding dimension, but of finite Krull dimension. After extension of the valuation to a suitable completion (whose existence is not established in the paper) the relation becomes much more precise, and suggests a possible way to establish local uniformization for an excellent equicharacteristic local domain with an algebraically closed residue field, by deforming a partial toric …
In this thesis we study toric degenerations of projective varieties. We compare different constructions to understand how and why they are related as s first step towards developing a global framework. In focus are toric degenerations obtained from representation theory, tropical geometry and cluster algebras. Often those rely on valuations and the theory of Newton-Okounkov bodies. Toric degenerations can be seen as a combinatorial shadow of the original objects. The goal is therefore to understand why the different theories are so closely related, by understanding the toric degenerations they…
A classical tensegrity model consists of an embedded graph in a vector space with rigid bars representing edges, and an assignment of a stress to every edge such that at every vertex of the graph the stresses sum up to zero. The tensegrity frameworks have been recently extended from the two dimensional graph case to the multidimensional setting. We study the multidimensional tensegrities using tools from toric geometry. For a given rational tensegrity framework $\mathcal{F}$, we construct a glued toric surface $X_\mathcal{F}$. We show that the abelian group of tensegrities on $\mathcal{F}$ is …
We use homogeneous spectra of multigraded rings to construct toric embeddings of a large family of projective varieties which preserve some of the birational geometry of the underlying variety, generalizing the well-known construction associated to Mori Dream Spaces.
In this paper we construct a degeneration of Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen varieties to toric varieties in an algebraic family and study the geometry of the resulting toric varieties. We give a natural set of torus invariant curves that generate the Chow group of $1$-cycles of the limiting toric variety and express the ample cone of this toric variety as a sub-cone of the ample cone of the corresponding Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen variety. We also give a description of Extremal and Mori rays and determine when this toric variety is Fano.
This article is based on my lecture notes from summer schools at the Universities of Utah (June 2007) and Warwick (September 2007). We provide an introduction to explicit methods in the study of moduli spaces of quiver representations and derived categories arising in toric geometry. The first main goal is to present the noncommutative geometric approach to semiprojective toric varieties via quivers. To achieve this, we use geometric invariant theory to construct both semiprojective toric varieties and moduli spaces of quiver representations. The second main goal builds on the first by present…
We provide a construction of examples of semistable degeneration via toric geometry. The applications include a higher dimensional generalization of classical degeneration of K3 surface into 4 rational components, an algebraic geometric version of decomposing K3 as the fiber sum of two E(1)'s as well as it's higher dimensional generalizations, and many other new examples.
Speyer and Sturmfels [SpSt] associated Gröbner toric degenerations $\mathrm{Gr}_2(\C^n)^{\tree}$ of $\mathrm{Gr}_2(\C^n)$ to each trivalent tree $\tree$ with $n$ leaves. These degenerations induce toric degenerations $M_{\br}^{\tree}$ of $M_{\br}$, the space of $n$ ordered, weighted (by $\br$) points on the projective line. Our goal in this paper is to give a geometric (Euclidean polygon) description of the toric fibers as stratified symplectic spaces and describe the action of the compact part of the torus as "bendings of polygons." We prove the conjecture of Foth and Hu [FH] that the toric f…
In this paper, we will introduce Quantum Toric Varieties which are (non-commutative) generalizations of ordinary toric varieties where all the tori of the classical theory are replaced by quantum tori. Quantum toric geometry is the non-commutative version of the classical theory; it generalizes non-trivially most of the theorems and properties of toric geometry. By considering quantum toric varieties as (non-algebraic) stacks, we define their category and show that it is equivalent to a category of quantum fans. We develop a Quantum Geometric Invariant Theory (QGIT) type construction of Quantu…
Given a smooth projective toric variety X, we construct an A-infinity category of Lagrangians with boundary on a level set of the Landau-Ginzburg mirror of X. We prove that this category is quasi-equivalent to the DG category of line bundles on X. This establishes part of the Homological Mirror Conjecture for toric varieties.
In this paper we give a geometric characterization of the cones of toric varieties that are complete intersections. In particular, we prove that the class of complete intersection cones is the smallest class of cones which is closed under direct sum and contains all simplex cones. Further, we show that the number of the extreme rays of such a cone, which is less than or equal to $2n-2$, is exactly $2n-2$ if and only if the cone is a bipyramidal cone, where $n>1$ is the dimension of the cone. Finally, we characterize all toric varieties whose associated cones are complete intersection cones.
In this paper, a new method to determine the complete set of dynamically balanced planar four-bar mechanims is presented. Using complex variables to model the kinematics of the mechanism, the dynamic balancing constraints are written as algebraic equations over complex variables and joint angular velocities. After elimination of the joint angular velocity variables, the problem is formulated as a problem of factorization of Laurent polynomials. Using toric polynomial division, necessary and sufficient conditions for dynamic balancing of planar four-bar mechanisms are derived.
We study CR geometry in arbitrary codimension, and introduce a process, which we call the Levi-Kahler quotient, for constructing Kahler metrics from CR structures with a transverse torus action. Most of the paper is devoted to the study of Levi-Kahler quotients of toric CR manifolds, and in particular, products of odd dimensional spheres. We obtain explicit descriptions and characterizations of such quotients, and find Levi-Kahler quotients of products of 3-spheres which are extremal in a weighted sense introduced by G. Maschler and the first author.
In this article, we describe symplectic and complex toric spaces associated to the five regular convex polyhedra. The regular tetrahedron and the cube are rational and simple, the regular octahedron is not simple, the regular dodecahedron is not rational and the regular icosahedron is neither simple nor rational. We remark that the last two cases cannot be treated via standard toric geometry.
We prove that the atom spectrum, which is a topological space associated to an arbitrary abelian category introduced by Kanda, of the category of finitely presented graded modules over a graded ring $R$ is given as a union of the homogeneous spectrum of $R$ with some additional points, which we call non-standard points. This description of the atom spectrum helps in understanding the sheafification process in toric geometry: if $S$ is the Cox ring of a normal toric variety $X$ without torus factors, then a finitely presented graded $S$-module sheafifies to zero if and only if its atom support …
This paper reexamines univariate reduction from a toric geometric point of view. We begin by constructing a binomial variant of the $u$-resultant and then retailor the generalized characteristic polynomial to fully exploit sparsity in the monomial structure of any given polynomial system. We thus obtain a fast new algorithm for univariate reduction and a better understanding of the underlying projections. As a corollary, we show that a refinement of Hilbert's Tenth Problem is decidable within single-exponential time. We also show how certain multisymmetric functions of the roots of polynomial …
Given a smooth complex toric variety we will compare real Lagerberg forms and currents on its tropicalization with invariant complex forms and currents on the toric variety. Our main result is a correspondence theorem which identifies the cone of invariant closed positive currents on the complex toric variety with closed positive currents on the tropicalization. In a subsequent paper, this correspondence will be used to develop a Bedford-Taylor theory of plurisubharmonic functions on the tropicalization.
Entropic regularization is a method for large-scale linear programming. Geometrically, one traces intersections of the feasible polytope with scaled toric varieties, starting at the Birch point. We compare this to log-barrier methods, with reciprocal linear spaces, starting at the analytic center. We revisit entropic regularization for unbalanced optimal transport, and we develop the use of optimal conic couplings. We compute the degree of the associated toric variety, and we explore algorithms like iterative scaling.
