We prove that any affine, resp. polarized projective, spherical variety admits a flat degeneration to an affine, resp. polarized projective, toric variety. Motivated by Mirror Symmetry, we give conditions for the limit toric variety to be a Gorenstein Fano, and provide many examples. We also provide an explanation for the limits as boundary points of the moduli space of stable pairs whose existence is predicted by the Minimal Model Program.
We study the algebra of Weyl modules in types $A$ and $C$ using the methods of arcs over toric degenerations and functional realization of dual space. We compute the generators and relations of this algebra and construct its basis.
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…
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.
We present a review on the recently discovered link between the Lie theory,the theory of quiver Grassmannians, and various degenerations of flag varieties. Our starting point is the induced Poincaré--Birkhoff--Witt filtration on the highest weight representations and the corresponding PBW degenerate flag varieties.
Following the historical track in pursuing $T$-equivariant flat toric degenerations of flag varieties and spherical varieties, we explain how powerful tools in algebraic geometry and representation theory, such as canonical bases, Newton-Okounkov bodies, PBW-filtrations and cluster algebras come to push the subject forward.
We give a method to estimate Seshadri constants on toric varieties at any point. By using the estimations and toric degenerations, we can obtain some new computations or estimations of Seshadri constants on non-toric varieties. In particular, we investigate Seshadri constants on hypersurfaces in projective spaces and Fano 3-folds with Picard number one in detail.
We study semi-stable degenerations of toric varieties determined by certain partitions of their moment polytopes. Analyzing their defining equations we prove a property of uniqueness.
We show that the counting of rational curves on a complete toric variety that are in general position to the toric prime divisors coincides with the counting of certain tropical curves. The proof is algebraic-geometric and relies on degeneration techniques and log deformation theory. This generalizes results of Mikhalkin obtained by different methods in the surface case to arbitrary dimensions.
We study algebraic, combinatorial and geometric aspects of weighted PBW-type degenerations of (partial) flag varieties in type $A$. These degenerations are labeled by degree functions lying in an explicitly defined polyhedral cone, which can be identified with a maximal cone in the tropical flag variety. Varying the degree function in the cone, we recover, for example, the classical flag variety, its abelian PBW degeneration, some of its linear degenerations and a particular toric degeneration.
We study the real loci of toric degenerations of complex varieties with reducible central fibre. We show that the topology of such degenerations can be explicitly described via the Kato-Nakayama space of the central fibre as a log space. We furthermore provide generalities of real structures in log geometry and their lift to Kato-Nakayama spaces. A key point of this paper is a description of the Kato-Nakayama space of a toric degeneration and its real locus, both as bundles determined by combinatorial data. We provide several examples including real toric degenerations of K3-surfaces and a tor…
We describe the effect of Feigin's flat degeneration of the type $\textrm{A}$ flag variety on its Schubert varieties. In particular, we study when they stay irreducible and in several cases we are able to encode reducibility of the degenerations in terms of symmetric group combinatorics. As a side result, we obtain an identification of some Schubert varieties with Richardson varieties in higher rank partial flag varieties.
We compute toric degenerations arising from the tropicalization of the full flag varieties $\mathcal{F}\ell_4$ and $\mathcal{F}\ell_5$ embedded in a product of Grassmannians. For $\mathcal{F}\ell_4$ and $\mathcal{F}\ell_5$ we compare toric degenerations arising from string polytopes and the FFLV polytope with those obtained from the tropicalization of the flag varieties. We also present a general procedure to find toric degenerations in the cases where the initial ideal arising from a cone of the tropicalization of a variety is not prime.
Linear degenerate flag varieties are degenerations of flag varieties as quiver Grassmannians. For type A flag varieties, we obtain characterizations of flatness, irreducibility and normality of these degenerations via rank tuples. Some of them are shown to be isomorphic to Schubert varieties and can be realized as highest weight orbits of partially degenerate Lie algebras, generalizing the corresponding results on degenerate flag varieties. To study normality, cell decompositions of quiver Grassmannians are constructed in a wider context of equioriented quivers of type A.
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 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.
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]).
We present a new approach to construct $T$-equivariant flat toric degenerations of flag varieties and spherical varieties, combining ideas coming from the theory of Newton-Okounkov bodies with ideas originally stemming from PBW-filtrations. For each pair $(S,>)$ consisting of a birational sequence and a monomial order, we attach to the affine variety $G/\hskip -3.5pt/U$ a monoid $Γ=Γ(S,>)$. As a side effect we get a vector space basis $\mathbb B_Γ$ of $\mathbb C[G/\hskip -3.5pt/U]$, the elements being indexed by $Γ$. The basis $\mathbb B_Γ$ has multiplicative properties very similar to those o…
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.
For an appropriate class of Fano complete intersections in toric varieties, we prove that there is a concrete relationship between degenerations to specific toric subvarieties and expressions for Givental's Landau-Ginzburg models as Laurent polynomials. As a result, we show that Fano varieties presented as complete intersections in partial flag manifolds admit degenerations to Gorenstein toric weak Fano varieties, and their Givental Landau-Ginzburg models can be expressed as corresponding Laurent polynomials. We also use this to show that all of the Laurent polynomials obtained by Coates, Kasp…
Batyrev (et. al.) constructed a family of Calabi-Yau varieties using small toric degenerations of the full flag variety G/B. They conjecture this family to be mirror to generic anti-canonical hypersurfaces in G/B. Recently Alexeev and Brion, as a part of their work on toric degenerations of spherical varieties, have constructed many degenerations of G/B. For any such degeneration we construct a family of varieties, which we prove coincides with Batyrev's in the small case. We prove that any two such families are birational, thus proving that mirror families are independent of the choice of deg…
We show that every rank one smooth Fano threefold has a weak Landau-Ginzburg model coming from a toric degeneration. The fibers of these Landau-Ginzburg models can be compactified to K3 surfaces with Picard lattice of rank 19. We also show that any smooth Fano variety of arbitrary dimension which is a complete intersection of Cartier divisors in weighted projective space has a very weak Landau-Ginzburg model coming from a toric degeneration.
Building on our earlier work on toric residues and reduction, we give a proof for the mixed toric residue conejecture of Batyrev and Materov. We simplify and streamline our technique of tropical degenerations, which allows one to interpolate between two localization principles: one appearing in the intersection theory toric quotients and the other in the calculus of toric residues. This quickly leads to the proof of the conjecture, which gives a closed form for the summation of a generating series whose coefficients are certain variants of the "numbers" of rational curves on toric complete int…
The $k$-secant degree is studied with a combinatorial approach. A planar toric degeneration of any projective toric surface $X$ corresponds to a regular unimodular triangulation $D$ of the polytope defining $X$. If the secant ideal of the initial ideal with respect to $D$ coincides with the initial ideal of the secant ideal, then $D$ is said to be delightful and the $k$-secant degree of $X$ can be easily computed. All delightful triangulations of toric surfaces having sectional genus $g\leq1$ are completely classified and, for $g\geq2$, a lower bound for the $2$- and $3$-secant degree, by mean…
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.
In this paper we study the geometry of toric degeneration of a Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen (BSDH) variety. We give some applications to BSDH varieties. Precisely, we classify Fano, weak Fano and log Fano BSDH varieties and their toric limits in Kac-Moody setting. We prove some vanishing theorems for the cohomology of tangent bundle (and line bundles) on BSDH varieties. We also recover the results in arXiv:1604.01998, by toric methods.
For fixed degree $d\leq 12$, we study the Hilbert scheme of degree $d$ smooth Fano threefolds in their anticanonical embeddings. We use this to classify all possible degenerations of these varieties to toric Fano varieties with at most canonical Gorenstein singularities.
We study toric degenerations of semi-infinite Grassmannians (a.k.a. quantum Grassmannians). While the toric degenerations of the classical Grassmannians are well studied, the only known example in the semi-infinite case is due to Sottile-Sturmfels. We start by providing a new interpretation of the Sottile-Sturmfels construction by finding a poset such that their degeneration is the toric variety of the order polytope of the poset. We then use our poset to construct and study a new toric degeneration in the semi-infinite case. Our construction is based on the notion of poset polytopes introduce…
We define a toric degeneration of an integrable system on a projective manifold, and prove the existence of a toric degeneration of the Gelfand-Cetlin system on the flag manifold of type A. As an application, we calculate the potential function for a Lagrangian torus fiber of the Gelfand-Cetlin system.
In the sl\_n case, A. Berenstein and A. Zelevinsky studied the Schützenberger involution in terms of Lusztig's canonical basis, [3]. We generalize their construction and formulas for any semisimple Lie algebra. We use for this the geometric lifting of the canonical basis, on which an analogue of the Schützenberger involution can be given. As an application, we construct semitoric degenerations of Richardson varieties, following a method of P. Caldero, [6]
Given a smooth Mori dream space $X$ we construct a model dominating all the small $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial modifications via tropicalization. This construction allows us to recover a Minkowski basis for the Newton-Okounkov bodies of divisors on $X$ and hence the movable cone of $X$. The existence of such basis allows us to prove the polyhedrality of the global Newton-Okounkov body and the existence of toric degenerations.
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.
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.
In this paper, we give a tropical method for computing Gromov-Witten type invariants of Fano manifolds of special type. This method applies to those Fano manifolds which admit toric degenerations to toric Fano varieties with singularities allowing small resolutions. Examples include (generalized) flag manifolds of type A, and some moduli space of rank two bundles on a genus two curve.
Let $X$ be a smooth irreducible complex algebraic variety of dimension $n$ and $L$ a very ample line bundle on $X$. Given a toric degeneration of $(X,L)$ satisfying some natural technical hypotheses, we construct a deformation $\{J_s\}$ of the complex structure on $X$ and bases $\mathcal{B}_s$ of $H^0(X,L, J_s)$ so that $J_0$ is the standard complex structure and, in the limit as $s \to \infty$, the basis elements approach dirac-delta distributions centered at Bohr-Sommerfeld fibers of a moment map associated to $X$ and its toric degeneration. The theory of Newton-Okounkov bodies and its assoc…
The Hodge algebra structures on the homogeneous coordinate rings of Grassmann varieties provide semi-toric degenerations of these varieties. In this paper we construct these semi-toric degenerations using quasi-valuations and triangulations of Newton-Okounkov bodies.
Let Δbe the Okounkov body of a divisor D on a projective variety X. We describe a geometric criterion for Δto be a lattice polytope, and show that in this situation X admits a flat degeneration to the corresponding toric variety. This degeneration is functorial in an appropriate sense.
We study toric degenerations of opposite Schubert and Richardson varieties inside degenerations of Grassmannians and flag varieties. These degenerations are parametrized by matching fields in the sense of Sturmfels and Zelevinsky. We construct so-called restricted matching field ideals whose generating sets are understood combinatorially through tableaux. We determine when these ideals are toric and coincide with Gröbner degenerations of Richardson varieties using the well established standard monomial theory for Grassmannians and flag varieties.
This is a short companion paper to arXiv:0810.3470. We construct an integrable system on an open subset of a Fano manifold equipped with a toric degeneration, and compute the potential function for its Lagrangian torus fibers if the central fiber is a toric Fano variety admitting a small resolution.
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 establish an explicit bijection between the toric degenerations of the Grassmannian $\textrm{Gr}(2,n)$ arising from maximal cones in tropical Grassmannians and the ones coming from plabic graphs corresponding to $\textrm{Gr}(2,n)$. We show that a similar statement does not hold for $\textrm{Gr}(3,6)$.
We investigate the class of degenerations of smooth cubic surfaces which are obtained from degenerating their Cox rings to toric algebras. More precisely, we work in the spirit of Sturmfels and Xu who use the theory of Khovanskii bases to determine toric degenerations of Del Pezzo surfaces of degree 4 and who leave the question of classifying these degenerations in the degree 3 case as an open problem. In order to carry out this classification we describe an approach which is closely related to tropical geometry and present partial results in this direction.
Our main goal is to show that the Gelfand--Tsetlin toric degeneration of the type A flag variety can be obtained within a degenerate representation-theoretic framework similar to the theory of PBW degenerations. In fact, we provide such frameworks for all Gröbner degenerations intermediate between the flag variety and the GT toric variety. These degenerations are shown to induce filtrations on the irreducible representations and the associated graded spaces are acted upon by a certain associative algebra. To achieve our goal, we construct embeddings of our Gröbner degenerations into the projec…
Let $R$ be a complete equicharacteristic noetherian local domain and $ν$ a valuation of its field of fractions whose valuation ring dominates $R$ with trivial residue field extension. The semigroup of values of $ν$ on $R\setminus \{0\}$ is not finitely generated in general. We produce equations in an appropriate generalized power series ring for the algebra encoding the degeneration of $R$ to the toric graded algebra ${\rm gr}_νR$ associated to the filtration defined by $ν$. We apply this to represent $ν$ as the limit of a sequence of Abhyankar semivaluations (valuations on quotients) of $R$ w…
Using the method of degenerating a Grassmannian into a toric variety, we calculate recursive formulas for the dimensions of the eigenspaces of the action of an n-dimensional torus on a Grassmannian of planes in an n-dimensional space. In order to verify our result we compare it with the polynomial describing the Euler characteristic of invertible sheaves on a projective space with four blown-up points.
We compute local Gromov-Witten invariants of cubic surfaces at all genera. We use a deformation of a cubic surface to a nef toric surface and the deformation invariance of Gromov-Witten invariants.
In this survey I summarize the constructions of toric degenerations obtained from valuations and Gröbner theory and describe in which sense they are equivalent. I show how adapted bases can be used to generalize the classical Newton polytope to what is called a $\mathbb B$-Newton polytope. The $\mathbb B$-Newton polytope determines the Newton--Okounkov polytopes of all Khovanskii-finite valuations sharing the adapted standard monomial basis $\mathbb B$.
Anderson proved that the finite generation of the value semigroup $Γ_{Y_\bullet}(D)$ in the construction of the Newton-Okounkov body $Δ_{Y_\bullet}(D)$ induces a toric degeneration of the corresponding variety $X$ to some toric variety $X_0$. In this case the normalization of $X_0$ is the normal toric variety corresponding to the rational polytope $Δ_{Y_\bullet}(D)$. Since $X_0$ is not normal in general this correspondence is rather implicit. In this article we investigate in conditions to assure that $X_0$ is normal, by comparing the Hilbert polynomial with the Ehrhart polynomial. In the case…
