Bunches of cones in the divisor class group -- A new combinatorial language for toric varieties

As an alternative to the description of a toric variety by a fan in the lattice of one parameter subgroups, we present a new language in terms of what we call bunches -- these are certain collections of cones in the vector space of rational divisor classes. The correspondence between these bunches and fans is based on classical Gale duality. The new combinatorial language allows a much more natural description of geometric phenomena around divisors of toric varieties than the usual method by fans does. For example, the numerically effective cone and the ample cone of a toric variety can be read off immediately from its bunch. Moreover, the language of bunches appears to be useful for classification problems.Comment: Minor changes, to appear in Int. Math. Res. No

Three lectures on Cox rings

Notes of an introductory course given at the conference "Torsors: Theory and Applications" in Edinburgh, January 2011.Comment: Minor corrections, 37 page

A software package for Mori dream spaces

Mori dream spaces form a large example class of algebraic varieties, comprising the well known toric varieties. We provide a first software package for the explicit treatment of Mori dream spaces and demonstrate its use by presenting basic sample computations. The software package is accompanied by a Cox ring database which delivers defining data for Cox rings and Mori dream spaces in a suitable format. As an application of the package, we determine the common Cox ring for the symplectic resolutions of a certain quotient singularity investigated by Bellamy/Schedler and Donten-Bury/Wi\'sniewski.Comment: 11 pages, minor changes, to appear in LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematic