A geometric characterization of toric varieties (Q1750376): Difference between revisions

A toric variety \(X\) is a normal variety containing an open subset \(X_0\) isomorphic to a torus, such that the action of the torus on itself extends to an action of the torus on \(X\). The complement of the open subset \(X_0\) is the toric invariant divisor \(D=\sum_{i=1}^d D_i\) where the \(D_i\) are prime divisors. It is well known that if \(X\) is proper, then the \(D_i\) span \(A_{n-1}(X)\) and we have \(d=r +n\) where \(r=\dim A_{n-1}(X)\otimes \mathbb R\). In this paper the authors give an interesting characterization of toric varieties. If \((X,\Delta )\) is a \(n\)-dimensional log pair, then a decomposition of \(\Delta\) is a set of effective Weil divisors \(S_1,\ldots , S_k\) and non-negative numbers \(a_1,\ldots ,a_k\) such that \(\sum a_iS_i\leq \Delta\). The complexity of such a decomposition is \(n+r-d\) where \(n=\dim X\), \(r\) is the dimension of the span of \(S_1,\ldots , S_k\) in \(A_{n-1}(X)\) and \(r=\sum a_i\). The complexity of the pair \((X,\Delta )\), denoted by \(c(X,\Delta )\) is the infimum of the complexities of decompositions of \(\Delta\). Thus, if \((X,\Delta )\) is a pair corresponding to a toric variety and its invariant divisor, then \(c(X,\Delta )=0\). In this paper the authors show that if \(X\) is a proper normal variety of dimension \(n\) and \((X,\Delta )\) is a log canonical pair such that \(-(K_X+\Delta )\) is nef, and \(c=c(X,\Delta )<1\), then \(c\geq 0\) and there exists a divisor \(D\geq \lfloor \Delta \rfloor\) such that \((X,D)\) is a pair corresponding to a toric variety and its invariant divisor.