Higher order selfdual toric varieties

The notion of higher order dual varieties of a projective variety, introduced in \cite{P83}, is a natural generalization of the classical notion of projective duality. In this paper we present geometric and combinatorial characterizations of those equivariant projective toric embeddings that satisfy higher order selfduality. We also give several examples and general constructions. In particular, we highlight the relation with Cayley-Bacharach questions and with Cayley configurations.Comment: 21 page

Explicit formulas for the multivariate resultant

We present formulas for the homogenous multivariate resultant as a quotient of two determinants. They extend classical Macaulay formulas, and involve matrices of considerably smaller size, whose non zero entries include coefficients of the given polynomials and coefficients of their Bezoutian. These formulas can also be viewed as an explicit computation of the morphisms and the determinant of a resultant complex.Comment: 30 pages, Late

Counting Solutions to Binomial Complete Intersections

We study the problem of counting the total number of affine solutions of a system of n binomials in n variables over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. We show that we may decide in polynomial time if that number is finite. We give a combinatorial formula for computing the total number of affine solutions (with or without multiplicity) from which we deduce that this counting problem is #P-complete. We discuss special cases in which this formula may be computed in polynomial time; in particular, this is true for generic exponent vectors.Comment: Several minor improvements. Final version to appear in the J. of Complexit

Codimension Theorems for Complete Toric Varieties

Let X be a complete toric variety with homogeneous coordinate ring S. In this article, we compute upper and lower bounds for the codimension in the critical degree of ideals of S generated by dim(X)+1 homogeneous polynomials that don't vanish simultaneously on X.Comment: Small changes including improved introduction. To appear: Proc. AM

Descartes' Rule of Signs for Polynomial Systems supported on Circuits

We give a multivariate version of Descartes' rule of signs to bound the number of positive real roots of a system of polynomial equations in n variables with n+2 monomials, in terms of the sign variation of a sequence associated both to the exponent vectors and the given coefficients. We show that our bound is sharp and is related to the signature of the circuit.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figure

A Simple Combinatorial Criterion for Projective Toric Manifolds with Dual Defect

We show that any smooth lattice polytope P with codegree greater or equal than (dim(P)+3)/2 (or equivalently, with degree smaller than dim(P)/2), defines a dual defective projective toric manifold. This implies that P is Q-normal (in the terminology of a recent paper by Di Rocco, Piene and the first author) and answers partially an adjunction-theoretic conjecture by Beltrametti and Sommese. Also, it follows that smooth lattice polytopes with this property are precisely strict Cayley polytopes, which completes the answer of a question of Batyrev and the second author in the nonsingular case.Comment: 12 page

Bases in the solution space of the Mellin system

Local holomorphic solutions z=z(a) to a univariate sparse polynomial equation p(z) =0, in terms of its vector of complex coefficients a, are classically known to satisfy holonomic systems of linear partial differential equations with polynomial coefficients. In this paper we investigate one of such systems of differential equations which was introduced by Mellin. We compute the holonomic rank of the Mellin system as well as the dimension of the space of its algebraic solutions. Moreover, we construct explicit bases of solutions in terms of the roots of p and their logarithms. We show that the monodromy of the Mellin system is always reducible and give some factorization results in the univariate case

Elimination Theory in Codimension Two

New formulas are given for Chow forms, discriminants and resultants arising from (not necessarily normal) toric varieties of codimension 2. Exact descriptions are also given for the secondary polygon and for the Newton polygon of the discriminant.Comment: 20 pages, Late