arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sam Payne.
We produce Brill-Noether general graphs in every genus, confirming a conjecture of Baker and giving a new proof of the Brill-Noether Theorem, due to Griffiths and Harris, over any algebraically closed field.
We produce open subsets of the moduli space of metric graphs without separating edges where the dimensions of Brill-Noether loci are larger than the corresponding Brill-Noether numbers. These graphs also have minimal rank determining sets that are larger than expected, giving couterexamples to a conjecture of Luo. Furthermore, limits of these graphs have Brill-Noether loci of the expected dimension, so dimensions of Brill-Noether loci of metric graphs do not vary upper semicontinuously in families. Motivated by these examples, we study a notion of rank for the Brill-Noether locus of a metric graph, closely analogous to the Baker-Norine definition of the rank of a divisor. We show that ranks of Brill-Noether loci vary upper semicontinuously in families of metric graphs and are related to dimensions of Brill-Noether loci of algebraic curves by a specialization inequality.
We study the dual complexes of boundary divisors in log resolutions of compactifications of algebraic varieties and show that the homotopy types of these complexes are independent of all choices. Inspired by recent developments in nonarchimedean geometry, we consider relations between these boundary complexes and weight filtrations on singular cohomology and cohomology with compact supports, and give applications to dual complexes of resolutions of isolated singularities that generalize results of Stepanov and Thuillier.
We study projectivizations of a special class of toric vector bundles that includes cotangent bundles, whose associated Klyachko filtrations are particularly simple. For these projectivized bundles, we give generators for the cone of effective divisors and a presentation of the Cox ring as a polynomial algebra over the Cox ring of a blowup of a projective space along a sequence of linear subspaces. As applications, we show that the projectivized cotangent bundles of some toric varieties are not Mori dream spaces and give examples of projectivized toric vector bundles whose Cox rings are isomorphic to that of M_{0,n}.
We introduce a moduli functor for varieties whose tropicalization realizes a given weighted fan and show that this functor is an algebraic space in general, and is represented by a scheme of finite type when the associated toric variety is quasiprojective. We study the geometry of these tropical realization spaces for the matroid fans studied by Ardila and Klivans, and show that the tropical realization space of a matroid fan is a torus torsor over the realization space of the matroid. As a consequence, we deduce that these tropical realization spaces satisfy Murphy's Law.
We study variations on combinatorial games in which, instead of alternating moves, the players bid with discrete bidding chips for the right to determine who moves next. We consider both symmetric and partisan games, and explore differences between discrete bidding games and Richman games, which allow real-valued bidding. Unlike Richman games, discrete bidding game variations of many familiar games, such as chess, Connect Four, and even Tic-Tac-Toe, are suitable for recreational play. We also present an analysis of Tic-Tac-Toe for both discrete and real-valued bidding.
An expository introduction to bidding chess and other bidding games. To appear in Mathematical Intelligencer.
We introduce extended tropicalizations for closed subvarieties of toric varieties and show that the analytification of a quasprojective variety over a nonarchimedean field is naturally homeomorphic to the inverse limit of the tropicalizations of its quasiprojective embeddings.
We show that an equivariant vector bundle on a complete toric variety is nef or ample if and only if its restriction to every invariant curve is nef or ample, respectively. Furthermore, we show that nef toric vector bundles have a nonvanishing global section at every point, and deduce that the underlying vector bundle is trivial if and only if its restriction to every invariant curve is trivial. We apply our methods and results to study, in particular, the vector bundles M_L that arise as the kernel of the evaluation map on sections of L, when L is an ample line bundle. We give examples of twists of such bundles that are ample but not globally generated.
We present a Monte Carlo algorithm for efficiently finding near optimal moves and bids in the game of Bidding Hex. The algorithm is based on the recent solution of Random-Turn Hex by Peres, Schramm, Sheffield, and Wilson together with Richman's work connecting random-turn games to bidding games.
We discuss a characteristic free version of Frobenius splittings for toric varieties and give a polyhedral criterion for a toric variety to be diagonally split. We apply this criterion to show that section rings of nef line bundles on diagonally split toric varieties are normally presented and Koszul, and that Schubert varieties are not diagonally split in general.
We show that lattice polytopes cut out by root systems of classical type are normal and Koszul, generalizing a well-known result of Bruns, Gubeladze, and Trung in type A. We prove similar results for Cayley sums of collections of polytopes whose Minkowski sums are cut out by root systems. The proofs are based on a combinatorial characterization of diagonally split toric varieties.
We show that a conjecture of Einsiedler, Kapranov, and Lind on adelic amoebas of subvarieties of tori and their intersections with open halfspaces of complementary dimension is false for subvarieties of codimension greater than one that have degenerate projections to smaller dimensional tori. We prove a suitably modified version of the conjecture using algebraic methods, functoriality of tropicalization, and a theorem of Zhang on torsion points in subvarieties of tori.
We use functoriality of tropicalization and the geometry of projections of subvarieties of tori to show that the fibers of the tropicalization map are dense in the Zariski topology. For subvarieties of tori over fields of generalized power series, points in each tropical fiber are obtained "constructively" using Kedlaya's transfinite version of Newton's method.
We give an effective upper bound on the h^*-polynomial of a lattice polytope in terms of its degree and leading coefficient, confirming a conjecture of Batyrev. We deduce this bound as a consequence of a strong Cayley decomposition theorem which says, roughly speaking, that any lattice polytope with a large multiple that has no interior lattice points has a nontrivial decomposition as a Cayley sum of polytopes of smaller dimension. In an appendix, we interpret this result in terms of adjunction theory for toric varieties.
We associate to each toric vector bundle on a toric variety X(Delta) a "branched cover" of the fan Delta together with a piecewise-linear function on the branched cover. This construction generalizes the usual correspondence between toric Cartier divisors and piecewise-linear functions. We apply this combinatorial geometric technique to investigate the existence of resolutions of coherent sheaves by vector bundles, using singular nonquasiprojective toric threefolds as a testing ground. Our main new result is the construction of complete toric threefolds that have no nontrivial toric vector bundles of rank less than or equal to three. The combinatorial geometric sections of the paper, which develop a theory of cone complexes and their branched covers, can be read independently.
We use localization to describe the restriction map from equivariant Chow cohomology to ordinary Chow cohomology for complete toric varieties in terms of piecewise polynomial functions and Minkowski weights. We compute examples showing that this map is not surjective in general, and that its kernel is not always generated in degree one. We prove a localization formula for mixed volumes of lattice polytopes and, more generally, a Bott residue formula for toric vector bundles.
We give a presentation of the moduli stack of toric vector bundles with fixed equivariant total Chern class as a quotient of a fine moduli scheme of framed bundles by a linear group action. This fine moduli scheme is described explicitly as a locally closed subscheme of a product of partial flag varieties cut out by combinatorially specified rank conditions. We use this description to show that the moduli of rank three toric vector bundles satisfy Murphy's Law, in the sense of Vakil. The preliminary sections of the paper give a self-contained introduction to Klyachko's classification of toric vector bundles.