Spaces of algebraic maps from real projective spaces to toric varieties

Abstract

The problem of approximating the infinite dimensional space of all continuous maps from an algebraic variety $X$ to an algebraic variety $Y$ by finite dimensional spaces of algebraic maps arises in several areas of geometry and mathematical physics. An often considered formulation of the problem (sometimes called the Atiyah-Jones problem after \cite{AJ}) is to determine a (preferably optimal) integer $n_D$ such that the inclusion from this finite dimensional algebraic space into the corresponding infinite dimensional one induces isomorphisms of homology (or homotopy) groups through dimension $n_D$, where $D$ denotes a tuple of integers called the "degree" of the algebraic maps and $n_D\to\infty$ as $D\to\infty$. In this paper we investigate this problem in the case when $X$ is a real projective space and $Y$ is a smooth compact toric variety.