Mutations of Laurent Polynomials and Flat Families with Toric Fibers

We give a general criterion for two toric varieties to appear as fibers in a flat family over the projective line. We apply this to show that certain birational transformations mapping a Laurent polynomial to another Laurent polynomial correspond to deformations between the associated toric varieties

Fano schemes of determinants and permanents

Let $D_{m,n}^r$ and $P_{m,n}^r$ denote the subschemes of $\mathbb{P}^{mn-1}$ given by the $r\times r$ determinants (respectively the $r\times r$ permanents) of an $m\times n$ matrix of indeterminates. In this paper, we study the geometry of the Fano schemes $\mathbf{F}_k(D_{m,n}^r)$ and $\mathbf{F}_k(P_{m,n}^r)$ parametrizing the $k$-dimensional planes in $\mathbb{P}^{mn-1}$ lying on $D_{m,n}^r$ and $P_{m,n}^r$, respectively. We prove results characterizing which of these Fano schemes are smooth, irreducible, and connected; and we give examples showing that they need not be reduced. We show that $\mathbf{F}_1(D_{n,n}^n)$ always has the expected dimension, and we describe its components exactly. Finally, we give a detailed study of the Fano schemes of $k$-planes on the $3\times 3$ determinantal and permanental hypersurfaces.Comment: 43 pages; v2 minor revisions. To appear in AN

K-Stability for Fano Manifolds with Torus Action of Complexity One

We consider Fano manifolds admitting an algebraic torus action with general orbit of codimension one. Using a recent result of Datar and Szekelyhidi, we effectively determine the existence of Kahler-Ricci solitons for those manifolds via the notion of equivariant K-stability. This allows us to give new examples of Kahler-Einstein Fano threefolds, and Fano threefolds admitting a non-trivial Kahler-Ricci soliton.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, changed to a more precise titl