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

Polarized Complexity-One T-Varieties

We describe polarized complexity-one T-varieties combinatorially in terms of so-called divisorial polytopes, and show how geometric properties of such a variety can be read off the corresponding divisorial polytope. We compare our description with other possible descriptions of polarized complexity-one T-varieties. We also describe how to explicitly find generators of affine complexity-one T-varieties.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

Vanishing cotangent cohomology for Pl\"ucker algebras

We use representation theory and Bott's theorem to show vanishing of higher cotangent cohomology modules for the homogeneous coordinate ring of Grassmannians in the Pl\"ucker embedding. As a biproduct we answer a question of Wahl about the cohomology of the square of the ideal sheaf for the case of Pl\"ucker relations.Comment: Some results generalized to isotropic Grassmannian

Fano Schemes for Generic Sums of Products of Linear Forms

We study the Fano scheme of $k$-planes contained in the hypersurface cut out by a generic sum of products of linear forms. In particular, we show that under certain hypotheses, linear subspaces of sufficiently high dimension must be contained in a coordinate hyperplane. We use our results on these Fano schemes to obtain a lower bound for the product rank of a linear form. This provides a new lower bound for the product ranks of the $6\times 6$ Pfaffian and $4\times 4$ permanent, as well as giving a new proof that the product and tensor ranks of the $3\times 3$ determinant equal five. Based on our results, we formulate several conjectures.Comment: 22 pages. v2: minor revisions to v

Deformations of Rational T-Varieties

We show how to construct certain homogeneous deformations for rational normal varieties with codimension one torus action. This can then be used to construct homogeneous deformations of any toric variety in arbitrary degree. For locally trivial deformations coming from this construction, we calculate the image of the Kodaira-Spencer map. We then show that for a smooth complete toric variety, our homogeneous deformations span the space of first-order deformations.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures; v2 minor changes to introduction; v3 some corrections, to appear in Journal of Algebraic Geometr

The Geometry of T-Varieties

This is a survey of the language of polyhedral divisors describing T-varieties. This language is explained in parallel to the well established theory of toric varieties. In addition to basic constructions, subjects touched on include singularities, separatedness and properness, divisors and intersection theory, cohomology, Cox rings, polarizations, and equivariant deformations, among others.Comment: 42 pages, 17 figures. v2: minor changes following the referee's suggestion