Moduli of Stable Surfaces

This article is a survey of basic facts about the moduli spaces of stable surfaces. These spaces are projective compactifications of the moduli spaces of minimal surfaces of general type. They share few of the nice features of the moduli spaces of stable curves. Some of the main pathologies are presented with some historical remarks and some more recent results on the boundary of these spaces.Received: February, 2004     

Moduli spaces of weighted pointed stable curves

A weighted pointed curve consists of a nodal curve and a sequence of marked smooth points, each assigned a number between zero and one. A subset of the marked points may coincide if the sum of the corresponding weights is no greater than one. We construct moduli spaces for these objects using methods of the log minimal model program, and describe the induced birational morphisms between moduli spaces as the weights are varied. In the genus zero case, we explain the connection to Geometric Invariant Theory quotients of points in the projective line, and to compactifications of moduli spaces studied by Kapranov, Keel, and Losev-Manin.     

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.     

Compactification of Limit ?-Net Spaces

 Limit ?-net spaces are defined as convergence spaces whose convergence is expressed by using generalized nets, the so-called ?-nets (where ? is a construct). For limit ?-net spaces we study compactifications, especially those ones that are analogous to the Alexandrov and Čech-Stone compactifications known for topological spaces. (Received 24 February 2000)     

Local Euler obstructions of toric varieties

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.     

Mellin-Barnes integrals as Fourier-Mukai transforms

We study the generalized hypergeometric system introduced by Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky and its relationship with the toric Deligne-Mumford (DM) stacks recently studied by Borisov, Chen and Smith. We construct series solutions with values in a combinatorial version of the Chen-Ruan (orbifold) cohomology and in the K-theory of the associated DM stacks. In the spirit of the homological mirror symmetry conjecture of Kontsevich, we show that the K-theory action of the Fourier-Mukai functors associated to basic toric birational maps of DM stacks are mirrored by analytic continuation transformations of Mellin-Barnes type.     

Enumerative meaning of mirror maps for toric Calabi–Yau manifolds

We prove that the inverse of a mirror map for a toric Calabi–Yau manifold of the form _KY$K_Y$, where Y$Y$ is a compact toric Fano manifold, can be expressed in terms of generating functions of genus 0 open Gromov–Witten invariants defined by Fukaya–Oh–Ohta–Ono (2010)  [15]. Such a relation between mirror maps and disk counting invariants was first conjectured by Gross and Siebert (2011)  [24, Conjecture 0.2 and Remark 5.1] as part of their program, and was later formulated in terms of Fukaya–Oh–Ohta–Ono’s invariants in the toric Calabi–Yau case in Chan et al. (2012)  [8, Conjecture 1.1].     

Disguised toric dynamical systems

We study families of polynomial dynamical systems inspired by biochemical reaction networks. We focus on complex balanced mass-action systems, which have also been called toric. They are known or conjectured to enjoy very strong dynamical properties, such as existence and uniqueness of positive steady states, local and global stability, persistence, and permanence. We consider the class of disguised toric dynamical systems, which contains toric dynamical systems, and to which all dynamical properties mentioned above extend naturally. By means of (real) algebraic geometry we show that some reaction networks have an empty toric locus or a toric locus of Lebesgue measure zero in parameter space, while their disguised toric locus is of positive measure. We also propose some algorithms one can use to detect the disguised toric locus.     

Multiplication maps and vanishing theorems for Toric varieties

We use multiplication maps to give a characteristic-free approach to vanishing theorems on toric varieties. Our approach is very elementary but is enough powerful to prove vanishing theorems.     

One-parameter toric deformations of cyclic quotient singularities

In the case of two-dimensional cyclic quotient singularities, we classify all one-parameter toric deformations in terms of certain Minkowski decompositions introduced by Altmann [Minkowski sums and homogeneous deformations of toric varieties, Tohoku Math. J. (2) 47 (2) (1995) 151-184.]. In particular, we show how to induce each deformation from a versal family, describe exactly to which reduced versal base space components each such deformation maps, describe the singularities in the general fibers, and construct the corresponding partial simultaneous resolutions.     

Compactification of Limit ?-Net Spaces

 Limit ?-net spaces are defined as convergence spaces whose convergence is expressed by using generalized nets, the so-called ?-nets (where ? is a construct). For limit ?-net spaces we study compactifications, especially those ones that are analogous to the Alexandrov and Čech-Stone compactifications known for topological spaces.     

Geometry of moduli spaces of rational curves in linear sections of Grassmannian Gr(2,5)

We prove that the moduli spaces of rational curves of degree at most 3 in linear sections of the Grassmannian $\mathrm{G}\mathrm{r}(2,5)$ are all rational varieties. We also study their compactifications and birational geometry.     

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 .     

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.     

Toric sets and orbits on toric varieties

Let D be an integer matrix. A toric set, namely the points in Kⁿ parametrized by the columns of D, and a toric variety are associated to D. The toric set is a subset of the toric variety. We describe the relation between the toric set and the toric variety, in terms of the orbits of the torus action on the toric variety. The toric set depends on the sign (+,−,0) pattern of the matrix D. Finally, we prove that any toric variety over an algebraically closed field can be expressed as a toric set, for an appropriate matrix.     

Singularities of Toric Manifolds

By using methods of toric geometry, we investigate compactifications of F-theory on the elliptic Calabi–Yau threefolds.