We consider subtorus actions on complex toric varieties. A natural candidate for a categorical quotient of such an action is the so-called toric quotient, a universal object constructed in the toric category. We prove that if the toric quotient is weakly proper and if in addition the quotient variety is of expected dimension then the toric quotient is in fact a categorical quotient in the category of algebraic varieties. For example, weak properness always holds for the toric quotient of a subtorus action on a toric variety whose fan has a convex support.
We show that the moduli space of stable n-pointed rational curves can be flatly degenerated to a projective toric variety. We arrive at this by showing that the Chow quotients of the Grassmannians admit toric degenerations, which in turn, follows from a theorem that we prove for toric degenerations of more general Chow quotients. Along the way, we also argued that GIT quotient of a flat family is again flat. In particular, all GIT quotients of flag varieties by maximal tori can be flatly degenerated to projective toric varieties ([9] and [12]).
Generalizing cones over projective toric varieties, we present arbitrary toric varieties as quotients of quasiaffine toric varieties. Such quotient presentations correspond to groups of Weil divisors generating the topology. Groups comprising Cartier divisors define free quotients, whereas $\QQ$-Cartier divisors define geometric quotients. Each quotient presentation yields homogeneous coordinates. Using homogeneous coordinates, we express quasicoherent sheaves in terms of multigraded modules and describe the set of morphisms into a toric variety.
We consider the action of a subtorus of the big torus on a toric variety. The aim of the paper is to define a natural notion of a quotient for this setting and to give an explicit algorithm for the construction of this quotient from the combinatorial data corresponding to the pair consisting of the subtorus and the toric variety. Moreover, we study the relations of such quotients with good quotients. We construct a good model, i.e. a dominant toric morphism from the given toric variety to some ``maximal'' toric variety having a good quotient by the induced action of the given subtorus.
Let $X$ be a projective normal toric variety and $T_0$ a rank one subtorus of the defining torus of $X$. We show that the normalization of the Chow quotient $X//T_0$, in the sense of Kapranov-Sturmfels-Zelevinsky, coarsely represents the moduli space of stable log maps to $X$ with discrete data given by $T_0\subset X$.
In this paper we give an explicit formula for the Riemann-Roch map for singular schemes which are quotients of smooth schemes by diagonalizable groups. As an application we obtain a simple proof of a formula for the Todd class of a simplicial toric variety. An equivariant version of this formula was previously obtained for complete simplicial toric varieties by Brion and Vergne using different techniques.
In the case of two-dimensional cyclic quotient singularities, we classify all one-parameter toric deformations in terms of certain Minkowski decompositions. In particular, we describe to which components each such deformation maps, show how to induce each deformation from a versal family, give explicit equations for each deformation, describe the singularities in the general fibers, and construct the corresponding partial simultaneous resolutions.
We consider subtorus actions on divisorial toric varieties. Here divisoriality means that the variety has many Cartier divisors like quasiprojective and smooth ones. We characterize when a subtorus action on such a toric variety admits a categorical quotient in the category of divisorial varieties. Our result generalizes previous statements for the quasiprojective case. An important tool for the proof is a universal reduction of an arbitrary toric variety to a divisorial one. This is done in terms of support maps, a notion generalizing support functions on a polytopal fan. A further essential …
This paper studies two related subjects. One is some combinatorics arising from linear projections of polytopes and fans of cones. The other is quotient varieties of toric varieties. The relation is that projections of polytopes are related to quotients of projective toric varieties and projection of fans are related to quotients of general toric varieties. Despite its relation to geometry the first part is purely combinatorial and should be of interest in its own right.
This article is motivated by the following local-to-global question: is every variety with tame quotient singularities globally the quotient of a smooth variety by a finite group? We show that this question has a positive answer for all quasi-projective varieties which are expressible as a quotient of a smooth variety by a split torus (e.g. simplicial toric varieties). Although simplicial toric varieties are rarely toric quotients of smooth varieties by finite groups, we give an explicit procedure for constructing the quotient structure using toric techniques. This result follow from a charact…
The GIT chamber decomposition arising from a subtorus action on a quasiprojective toric variety is a polyhedral complex. Denote by Sigma the fan that is the cone over the polyhedral complex. In this paper we show that the toric variety defined by the fan Sigma is the normalization of the toric Chow quotient of a closely related affine toric variety by a complementary torus.
We prove that for each positive integer $n$ there exists a positive number $ε_n$ so that $n$-dimensional toric quotient singularities satisfy the ACC for mld's on the interval $(0,ε_n)$. In the course of the proof, we will show a geometric Jordan property for finite automorphism groups of affine toric varieties.
The Chow quotient of a toric variety by a subtorus, as defined by Kapranov-Sturmfels-Zelevinsky, coarsely represents the main component of the moduli space of stable toric varieties with a map to a fixed projective toric variety, as constructed by Alexeev and Brion. We show that, after endowing both spaces with the structure of a logarithmic stack, the resulting spaces are isomorphic. Along the way, we construct the Chow quotient stack and demonstrate several properties that it satisfies.
We prove that every Q-factorial complete toric variety is a finite quotient of a poly weighted space (PWS), as defined in our previous work arXiv:1501.05244. This generalizes the Batyrev-Cox and Conrads description of a Q-factorial complete toric variety of Picard number 1, as a finite quotient of a weighted projective space (WPS) \cite[Lemma~2.11]{BC} and \cite[Prop.~4.7]{Conrads}, to every possible Picard number, by replacing the covering WPS with a PWS. As a consequence we describe the bases of the subgroup of Cartier divisors inside the free group of Weil divisors and the bases of the Pica…
P-resolutions of two-dimensional, cyclic quotient singularities have been introduced to study deformation theory. Those P-resolutions (as well as the singularities themselves) are toric varieties. In the present paper we give a straight, elementary description of them just by their defining fans.
Let X be an affine toric variety. The total coordinates on X provide a canonical presentation of X as a quotient of a vector space by a linear action of a quasitorus. We prove that the orbits of the connected component of the automorphism group Aut(X) on X coincide with the Luna strata defined by the canonical quotient presentation.
We give explicit equations for the Chow and Hilbert quotients of a projective scheme X by the action of an algebraic torus T in an auxiliary toric variety. As a consequence we provide GIT descriptions of these canonical quotients, and obtain other GIT quotients of X by variation of GIT quotient. We apply these results to find equations for the moduli space \bar{M}_{0,n} of stable genus zero n-pointed curves as a subvariety of a smooth toric variety defined via tropical methods.
In this article we investigate algebraic morphisms between toric varieties. Given presentations of toric varieties as quotients we are interested in the question when a morphism admits a lifting to these quotient presentations. We show that this can be completely answered in terms of invariant divisors. As an application we prove that two toric varieties, which are isomorphic as abstract algebraic varieties, are even isomorphic as toric varieties. This generalizes a well-known result of Demushkin on affine toric varieties.
We calculate the automorphism group of a complete toric variety $X$ with torus $T_M$. We prove that the radical unipotent of $Aut_k^0X$ is a semidirect product of additive groups, the reductive part is a quotient of a product of lineal groups and we give the action of linear groups on the additive groups. We also prove that $Aut_kX/Aut_k^0X$ is a quotient of the group of automorphisms of $M$ leaving invariant the fan.
Let X be an affine T-variety. We study two different quotients for the action of T on X: the toric Chow quotient X/_CT and the toric Hilbert scheme H. We introduce a notion of the main component H_0 of H which parameterizes general T-orbit closures in X and their flat limits. The main component U_0 of the universal family U over H is a preimage of H_0. We define an analogue of a universal family W_X over the main component of the X/_CT. We show that the toric Chow morphism restricted on the main components lifts to a birational projective morphism from U_0 to W_X. The variety W_X also provides…
We give a complete classification of del Pezzo surfaces with quotient singularities and Picard rank 1 which admit a Q-Gorenstein smoothing. There are 14 infinite families of toric examples. The surfaces in each family correspond to solutions of a Markov-type equation. The remaining surfaces are obtained as deformations of the toric surfaces or belong to a finite list of sporadic surfaces.
This work characterizes global quotient stacks---smooth stacks associated to a finite group acting a manifold---among smooth quotient stacks $[M/G]$, where $M$ is a smooth manifold equipped with a smooth proper action by a Lie group $G$. The characterization is described in terms of the action of the connected component $G_0$ on $M$ and is related to (stacky) fundamental group and covering theory. This characterization is then applied to smooth toric Deligne-Mumford stacks, and global quotients among toric DM stacks are then characterized in terms of their associated combinatorial data of stac…
When a reductive group acts on an algebraic variety, a linearized ample line bundle induces a stratification on the variety where the strata are ordered by the degrees of instability. In this paper, we study variation of stratifications coming from the group actions in the GIT quotient construction for projective toric varieties. Cox showed that each projective toric variety is a GIT quotient of an affine space by a diagonalizable group with respect to linearizations that come from ample divisors on the toric variety. We provide a sufficient conditions for two ample divisors to induce the same…
A key result in equivariant symplectic geometry is Delzant's classification of compact connected symplectic toric manifolds. The moment map induces an embedding of the quotient of the manifold by the torus action into the dual of the Lie algebra of the torus; its image is a unimodular ("Delzant") polytope; this gives a bijection between unimodular polytopes and isomorphism classes of compact connected symplectic toric manifolds. In this paper we extend Delzant's classification to non-compact symplectic toric manifolds. For a non-compact symplectic toric manifold the image of the moment map nee…
We show that all toric noncommutative crepant resolutions (NCCRs) of affine GIT quotients of "weakly symmetric" unimodular torus representations are derived equivalent. This yields evidence for a non-commutative extension of a well known conjecture by Bondal and Orlov stating that all crepant resolutions of a Gorenstein singularity are derived equivalent. We prove our result by showing that all toric NCCRs of the affine GIT quotient are derived equivalent to a fixed Deligne-Mumford GIT quotient stack associated to a generic character of the torus. This extends a result by Halpern-Leistner and …
Dropping separatedness in the definition of a toric variety, one obtains the more general notion of a toric prevariety. Toric prevarieties occur as ambient spaces in algebraic geometry and moreover they appear naturally as intermediate steps in quotient constructions. We first provide a complete description of the category of toric prevarieties in terms of convex-geometrical data, so-called systems of fans. In a second part, we consider actions of subtori H of the big torus of a toric prevariety X and investigate quotients for such actions. Using our language of systems of fans, we characteriz…
Let X be an irreducible affine T-variety. We consider families of affine stable toric T-varieties over X and give a description of the corresponding moduli space as the quotient stack of an open subscheme in a certain toric Hilbert scheme under the action of a torus.
In this paper we calculate fundamental groups (and some of their quotients) of complements of four toric varieties branch curves. For these calculations, we study properties and degenerations of these toric varieties and the braid monodromies of the branch curves in $\mathbb{CP}^2$. The fundamental groups related to the first three toric varieties turn to be quotients of the Artin braid groups $\mathcal{B}_5$, $\mathcal{B}_6$, and $\mathcal{B}_4$, while the fourth one is a certain quotient of the group $\tilde{\mathcal{B}}_6 = \mathcal{B}_6/<[X,Y]>$, where $X, Y$ are transversal. The quotients…
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.
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.
A toric del Pezzo surface $X_P$ with cyclic quotient singularities determines and is determined by a Fano polygon $P$. We construct an affine manifold with singularities that partially smooths the boundary of $P$; this a tropical version of a Q-Gorenstein partial smoothing of $X_P$. We implement a mild generalization of the Gross-Siebert reconstruction algorithm - allowing singularities that are not locally rigid - and thereby construct (a formal version of) this partial smoothing directly from the affine manifold. This has implications for mirror symmetry: roughly speaking, it implements half…
The Cox construction presents a toric variety as a quotient of affine space by a torus. The category of coherent sheaves on the corresponding stack thus has an evident description as invariants in a quotient of the category of modules over a polynomial ring. Here we give the mirror to this description, and in particular, a clean new proof of mirror symmetry for smooth toric stacks.
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.
We show that a weight variety, which is a quotient of a flag variety by the maximal torus, admits a flat degeneration to a toric variety. In particular, we show that the moduli spaces of spatial polygons degenerate to polarized toric varieties with the moment polytopes defined by the lengths of their diagonals. We extend these results to more general Flaschka-Millson hamiltonians on the quotients of products of projective spaces. We also study boundary toric divisors and certain real loci.
We give examples for existence and non-existence of categorical quotients for algebraic group actions in the categories of algebraic varieties and prevarieties. All our examples are subtorus actions on toric varieties.
Let \X be an affine toric variety under a torus \T and let T be a subtorus. The general T-orbit closures in \X and their flat limits are parametrized by the main component H_0 of the toric Hilbert scheme. Further, the quotient torus \T/T acts on H_0 with a dense orbit. We describe the fan of this toric variety; this leads us to an integral analogue of the fiber polytope of Billera and Sturmfels. We also describe the relation of H_0 to the main component of the inverse limit of GIT quotients of \X by T.
On a smooth projective variety with k ample line bundles, we denote by Z the complete intersection subvariety defined by generic sections. We define the twisted quantum D-module which is a vector bundle with a flat connection, a flat pairing and a natural integrable structure. An appropriate quotient of it is isomorphic to the ambient part of the quantum D-module of Z. When the variety is toric, these quantum D-modules are cyclic. The twisted quantum D-module can be presented via mirror symmetry by the GKZ system associated to the total space of the dual of the direct sum of these line bundles…
This note constructs the flat toric degeneration of the manifold FL_n of flags in C^n from [Gonciulea-Lakshmibai 96] as an explicit GIT quotient of the Gr"obner degeneration in [Knutson-Miller 03]. This implies that Schubert varieties degenerate to reduced unions of toric varieties, associated to faces indexed by rc-graphs (reduced pipe dreams) in the Gel'fand-Cetlin polytope. Our explicit description of the toric degeneration of FL_n provides a simple explanation of how Gel'fand-Cetlin decompositions for irreducible polynomial representations of GL_n arise via geometric quantization.
We study residues on a complete toric variety X, which are defined in terms of the homogeneous coordinate ring of X. We first prove a global transformation law for toric residues. When the fan of the toric variety has a simplicial cone of maximal dimension, we can produce an element with toric residue equal to 1. We also show that in certain situations, the toric residue is an isomorphism on an appropriate graded piece of the quotient ring. When X is simplicial, we prove that the toric residue is a sum of local residues. In the case of equal degrees, we also show how to represent X as a quotie…
The toric fiber product is an operation that combines two ideals that are homogeneous with respect to a grading by an affine monoid. The Segre product is a related construction that combines two multigraded rings. The quotient ring by a toric fiber product of two ideals is a subring of the Segre product, but in general this inclusion is strict. We contrast the two constructions and show that any Segre product can be presented as a toric fiber product without changing the involved quotient rings. This allows to apply previous results about toric fiber products to the study of Segre products. We…
We introduce a new version of 3d mirror symmetry for toric stacks, inspired by a 3d $\mathcal{N} = 2$ abelian mirror symmetry construction in physics. Given some toric data, we introduce the $K$-theoretic $I$-function with effective level structure for the associated toric stack. When a particular stability condition is chosen, it restricts to the $I$-function for the particular toric GIT quotient. The mirror of a toric stack is defined by the Gale dual of the original toric data. We then proved the mirror conjecture that the $I$-functions of a mirror pair coincide, under the mirror map, which…
We define a quasi--projective reduction of a complex algebraic variety $X$ to be a regular map from $X$ to a quasi--projective variety that is universal with respect to regular maps from $X$ to quasi--projective varieties. A toric quasi--projective reduction is the analogous notion in the category of toric varieties. For a given toric variety $X$ we first construct a toric quasi--projective reduction. Then we show that $X$ has a quasi--projective reduction if and only if its toric quasi--projective reduction is surjective. We apply this result to characterize when the action of a subtorus on a…
We compare the cohomology ring of the flag variety $FL_n$ and the Chow cohomology ring of the Gelfand-Zetlin toric variety $X_{GZ}$. We show that $H^*(FL_n, \mathbb{Q})$ is the Gorenstein quotient of the subalgebra $L$ of $A^*(X_{GZ}, \mathbb{Q})$ generated by degree $1$ elements. We compute these algebras for $n=3$ to see that, in general, the subalgebra $L$ does not have Poincare duality.
This note shows that a certain toric quotient of the quintic Calabi-Yau threefold in projective four-space provides a counterexample to a recent conjecture of Cox and Katz concerning nef cones of toric hypersurfaces.
The main goal of this paper is to study varieties with the best possible Mori theoretic properties (measured by the existence of a certain decomposition of the cone of effective divisors). We call such a variety a Mori Dream Space. There turn out to be many examples, including quasi-smooth projective toric (or more generally, spherical) varieties, many GIT quotients, and log Fano 3-folds. We characterize Mori dream spaces as GIT quotients of affine varieties by a torus in a manner generalizing Cox's construction of toric varieties as quotients of affine space. Via the quotient description, the…
Extending work of Bielawski-Dancer and Konno, we develop a theory of toric hyperkahler varieties, which involves toric geometry, matroid theory and convex polyhedra. The framework is a detailed study of semi-projective toric varieties, meaning GIT quotients of affine spaces by torus actions, and specifically, of Lawrence toric varieties, meaning GIT quotients of even-dimensional affine spaces by symplectic torus actions. A toric hyperkahler variety is a complete intersection in a Lawrence toric variety. Both varieties are non-compact, and they share the same cohomology ring, namely, the Stanle…
We show that every irreducible, simply connected curve on a toric affine surface X over the field of complex numbers is an orbit closure of a multiplicative group action on X. It follows that up to the action of the automorphism group Aut(X) there are only finitely many non-equivalent embeddings of the affine line in X. A similar description is given for simply connected curves in the quotients of the affine plane by small finite linear groups. We provide also an analog of the Jung-van der Kulk theorem for affine toric surfaces, and apply this to study actions of algebraic groups on such surfa…
We present an explicit formula for computing toric residues as a quotient of two determinants, a la Macaulay, where the numerator is a minor of the denominator. We also give an irreducible representation of toric residues by extending the theory of subresultants to monomials of critical degree in the homogeneous coordinate ring of the corresponding toric variety.
We explicitly describe infintesimal deformations of cyclic quotient singularities that satisfy one of the deformation conditions introduced by Wahl, Kollár-Shepherd-Barron and Viehweg. The conclusion is that in many cases these three notions are different from each other. In particular, we see that while the KSB and the Viehweg versions of the moduli space of surfaces of general type have the same underlying reduced subscheme, their infinitesimal structures are different.
We compute the cohomology rings of smooth real toric varieties and of real toric spaces, which are quotients of real moment-angle complexes by freely acting subgroups of the ambient 2-torus. The differential graded algebra we present is in fact an equivariant dga model, valid for arbitrary coefficients. We deduce from our description that smooth toric varieties are M-varieties.
