Irrational Toric Varieties

Abstract

Classical toric varieties are among the simplest objects in algebraic geometry. They arise in an elementary fashion as varieties parametrized by monomials whose exponents are a finite subset $\mathcal{A}$ of $\mathbb{Z}^n$. They may also be constructed from a rational fan $\Sigma$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. The combinatorics of the set $\mathcal{A}$ or fan $\Sigma$ control the geometry of the associated toric variety. These toric varieties have an action of an algebraic torus with a dense orbit. Applications of algebraic geometry in geometric modeling and algebraic statistics have long studied the nonnegative real part of a toric variety as the main object, where the set $\mathcal{A}$ may be an arbitrary set in $\mathbb{R}^n$. These are called irrational affine toric varieties. This theory has been limited by the lack of a construction of an irrational toric variety from an arbitrary fan in $\mathbb{R}^n$. We construct a theory of irrational toric varieties associated to arbitrary fans. These are $(\mathbb{R}_>)^n$-equivariant cell complexes dual to the fan. Such an irrational toric variety is projective (may be embedded in a simplex) if and only if its fan is the normal fan of a polytope, and in that case, the toric variety is homeomorphic to that polytope. We use irrational toric varieties to show that the space of Hausdorff limits of translates an irrational toric variety associated to a finite subset $\mathcal{A}$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$ is homeomorphic to the secondary polytope of $\mathcal{A}$.