Toric hyperkähler varieties (Q1856379)

Summary: Extending work of \textit{R. Bielawski} and \textit{A. S. Dancer} [Commun. Anal. Geom. 8, 727-760 (2000; Zbl 0992.53034)] and \textit{H. Konno} [Int. J. Math. 11, 1001-1026 (2000; Zbl 0991.53027)], we develop a theory of toric hyper-Kähler varieties, which involves toric geometry, matroid theory and convex polyhedra. The framework is a detailed study of semi-projective toric varieties, meaning GIT quotients of affine spaces by torus actions, and specifically, of Lawrence toric varieties, meaning GIT quotients of even-dimensional affine spaces by symplectic torus actions. A toric hyper-Kähler variety is a complete intersection in a Lawrence toric variety. Both varieties are non-compact, and they share the same cohomology ring, namely, the Stanley-Reisner ring of a matroid modulo a linear system of parameters. Familiar applications of toric geometry to combinatorics, including the hard Lefschetz theorem and the volume polynomials of Khovanskij-Pukhlikov [\textit{A. G. Khovanskij} and \textit{A. V. Pukhlikov}, St. Petersbg. Math. J. 4, 789-812 (1993; Zbl 0798.52010)], are extended to the hyper-Kähler setting. When the matroid is graphic, our construction gives the toric quiver varieties, in the sense of \textit{H. Nakajima} [Duke Math. J. 91, 515-560 (1998; Zbl 0970.17017)].