Toric degenerations of spherical varieties

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.     

𝔾a-ACTIONS ON AFFINE CONES

An affine algebraic variety X is called cylindrical if it contains a principal Zariski dense open cylinder U ? Z × A1. A polarized projective variety (Y, H) is called cylindrical if it contains a cylinder U = Y \ supp D, where D is an effective Q-divisor on Y such that [D] ∈ Q+[H] in PicQ(Y ). We show that cylindricity of a polarized projective variety is equivalent to that of a certain Veronese affine cone over this variety. This gives a criterion of the existence of a unipotent group action on an affine cone.     

Fiber Fans and Toric Quotients

The GIT chamber decomposition arising from a subtorus action on a polarized quasiprojective toric variety is a polyhedral complex. Denote by Σ the fan that is the cone over the polyhedral complex. In this paper we show that the toric variety defined by the fan Σ is the normalization of the toric Chow quotient of a closely related affine toric variety by a complementary torus.     

Toric P-difference varieties

In this paper, we introduce the concept of P-difference varieties and study the properties of toric P-difference varieties. Toric P-difference varieties are analogues of toric varieties in difference algebraic geometry. The category of affine toric P-difference varieties with toric morphisms is shown to be antiequivalent to the category of affine P [x]-semimodules with P [x]-semimodule morphisms. Moreover, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the irreducible invariant P-difference subvarieties of an affine toric P-difference variety and the faces of the corresponding affine P [x]-semimodule. We also define abstract toric P-difference varieties by gluing affine toric P-difference varieties. The irreducible invariant P-difference subvariety-face correspondence is generalized to abstract toric P-difference varieties. By virtue of this correspondence, a divisor theory for abstract toric P-difference varieties is developed.     

Quasi-projective reduction of toric varieties

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 quasi–projective toric variety admits a categorical quotient in the category of quasi–projective varieties. Received October 29, 1998; in final form December 28, 1998     

Subvarieties of generic hypersurfaces in a nonsingular projective toric variety

We investigate the subvarieties contained in generic hypersurfaces of projective toric varieties and prove two main theorems. The first generalizes Clemens’ famous theorem on the genus of curves in hypersurfaces of projective spaces to curves in hypersurfaces of toric varieties and the second improves the bound in the special case of toric varieties in a theorem of Ein on the positivity of subvarieties contained in sufficiently ample generic hypersurfaces of projective varieties. Both depend on a hypothesis which deals with the surjectivity of multiplication maps of sections of line bundles on the toric variety. We also obtain an infinitesimal Torelli theorem for hypersurfaces of toric varieties.     

On images of affine spaces

We prove that every non-degenerate toric variety, every homogeneous space of a connected linear algebraic group without non-constant invertible regular functions, and every variety covered by affine spaces admit a surjective morphism from an affine space.     

Three-Dimensional Toric Morphisms with Anti-Nef Canonical Divisors

In this article, we classify projective toric birational morphisms from Gorenstein toric 3-folds onto the 3-dimensional affine space with relatively ample anti-canonical divisors.     

Toric sheaves,stability and fibrations

For an equivariant reflexive sheaf over a polarised toric variety, we study slope stability of its reflexive pullback along a toric fibration. Examples of such fibrations include equivariant blow-ups and toric locally trivial fibrations. We show that stability (resp. unstability) is preserved under such pullbacks for so-called adiabatic polarisations. In the strictly semistable situation, under locally freeness assumptions, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the graded object to ensure stability of the pulled back sheaf. As applications, we provide various stable perturbations of semistable tangent sheaves, either by changing the polarisation, or by blowing-up a subvariety. Finally, our results apply uniformly in specific flat families and induce injective maps between the associated moduli spaces.     

Uniform Zariski’s theorem on fundamental groups

The Zariski theorem says that for every hypersurface in a complex projective (resp. affine) space and for every generic plane in the projective (resp. affine) space the natural embedding generates an isomorphism of the fundamental groups of the complements to the hypersurface in the plane and in the space. If a family of hypersurfaces depends algebraically on parameters then it is not true in general that there exists a plane such that the natural embedding generates an isomorphism of the fundamental groups of the complements to each hypersurface from this family in the plane and in the space. But we show that in the affine case such a plane exists after a polynomial coordinate substitution. The research was partially supported by an NSA grant.     

Toric degenerations and vector bundles

There are many affine subalgebras of polynomial rings with highly non-trivial projective modules, whose initial algebras (toric degenerations) are still finitely generated and have all projective modules free.

     

Demushkin's Theorem in codimension one

Demushkin's Theorem says that any two toric structures on an affine variety X are conjugate in the automorphism group of X. We provide the following extension: Let an (n–1)-dimensional torus T act effectively on an n-dimensional affine toric variety X. Then T is conjugate in the automorphism group of X to a subtorus of the big torus of X. Mathematics Subject Classification: 13A50, 14L30, 14M25, 14R20.     

Higher K-Theory of Toric Varieties

A natural higher K-theoretic analogue of the triviality of vector bundles on affine toric varieties is the conjecture on nilpotence of the multiplicative action of the natural numbers on the K-theory of these varieties. This includes both Quillen's fundamental result on K-homotopy invariance of regular rings and the stable version of the triviality of vector bundles on affine toric varieties. Moreover, it yields a similar behavior of not necessarily affine toric varieties and, further, of their equivariant closed subsets. The conjecture is equivalent to the claim that the relevant admissible morphisms of the category of vector bundles on an affine toric variety can be supported by monomials not in a nondegenerate corner subcone of the underlying polyhedral cone. We prove that one can in fact eliminate all lattice points in such a subcone, except maybe one point. The elimination of the last point is also possible in 0 characteristic if the action of the big Witt vectors satisfies a very natural condition. A partial result of this in the arithmetic case provides first nonsimplicial examples, actually an explicit infinite series of combinatorially different affine toric varieties, simultaneously verifying the conjecture for all higher groups.Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, INTAS grant 99-00817 and TMR grant ERB FMRX CT-97-0107     

Toric Kempf-Ness sets

In the theory of algebraic group actions on affine varieties, the concept of a Kempf-Ness set is used to replace the categorical quotient by the quotient with respect to a maximal compact subgroup. Using recent achievements of “toric topology,” we show that an appropriate notion of a Kempf-Ness set exists for a class of algebraic torus actions on quasiaffine varieties (coordinate subspace arrangement complements) arising in the Batyrev-Cox “geometric invariant theory” approach to toric varieties. We proceed by studying the cohomology of these “toric” Kempf-Ness sets. In the case of projective nonsingular toric varieties the Kempf-Ness sets can be described as complete intersections of real quadrics in a complex space. Published in Russian in Trudy Matematicheskogo Instituta imeni V.A. Steklova, 2008, Vol. 263, pp. 159–172.     

Differential operators on toric varieties and Fourier transform

We show that Fourier transforms on the Weyl algebras have a geometric counterpart in the framework of toric varieties, namely they induce isomorphisms between twisted rings of differential operators on regular toric varieties, whose fans are related to each other by reflections of one-dimensional cones. The simplest class of examples is provided by the toric varieties related by such reflections to projective spaces. It includes the blow-up at a point of the affine space and resolution of singularities of varieties appearing in the study of the minimal orbit of .     

Spherical complexes and nonprojective toric varieties

A combinatorial criterion for a toric variety to be projective is given which uses Gale-transforms. Furthermore, classes of nonprojective toric varieties are constructed.