Smooth toric varieties with small Picard number are projective (Q1174495)

The theory of toric varieties relates algebraic geometry and algebraic group actions to the theory of convex polytopes. Toric varieties are obtained by glueing the spectra of monomial algebras which correspond to polyhedral cones in \(\mathbb{Z}^ d\). The Picard group of a toric variety \(T\) is the group of isomorphy classes of line bundles on \(T\). The cardinality of the Picard group is called the Picard number of \(T\). It is proved that every complete smooth toric variety with Picard number \(\leq 3\) is projective. An example of Oda of a non-projective variety with Picard number 4 shows that the result is best possible. The proof uses Helly's theorem from convexity for a reduction of the problem to the 6- dimensional case. Using Gale-transform techniques from convexity all 6- dimensional toric varieties of the required kind are enumerated to complete the proof.