Random toric surfaces and a threshold for smoothness (Q1727690)

A normal toric surface $X_{\Sigma}$ is determined by a rational fan $\Sigma$ in ${\mathbb R}^2$ and by the orbit-cone correspondence, the $2$-dimensional cones in this fan correspond to fixed points under the torus action and the only singularities occur at the fixed points. Since these are $2$-dimensional constructions, given any finite collection of rays $S\subseteq {\mathbb Z}^2$ one may fill-in every possible cone determined by the rays in $S$ to obtain a fan $\Sigma$ such that $\Sigma(1)=S$ and $\Sigma$ is maximal with respect to inclusion among all fans with that property that $\Sigma(1)=S$. Given a positive parameter $h$ and a set $R$ of rays $\rho\subseteq {\mathbb R}^2$ with corresponding lattice points $u_{\rho}$ satisfying that $|u_{\rho}|\leq h$, the author constructs a distribution $T(h,p)$ over fans $\Sigma$ formed by choosing rays in $R$ with probability $p$, and then completing it to a fan as above. Two extreme cases of this construction are: For the empty subset of $R$ one obtains the empty fan which gives the $2$-dimensional torus. For the total set $R$, the author proves that the corresponding fan is smooth. The number $N_h$ of rays of height $u_{\rho}|$ at most $h$ is proportional to $h^2$, explicitly, the author proves that \[ \lim_{h\rightarrow\infty}\frac{N_h}{h^2}=\frac{4}{\zeta(2)}, \] where $\zeta(s)$ is Riemann's zeta function. \par Next, for a fan $\Sigma$ chosen with respect to $T(h,p)$, the author says that $\Sigma$ has a property with hight probability if the probability that $\Sigma$ has the property goes to $1$ as $h\rightarrow\infty$. Also, for real functions $f,g$ write $f\prec g$ to mean $\lim_{h\rightarrow\infty}\frac{f(h)}{g(h)}=0$. Let $q$ be a nonnegative real function of $h$, bounded by $1$. The main result of the paper under review is that for a fan $\Sigma$ chosen with respect to $T(h,1-q)$ we have the following threshold phenomena: \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] If $q\prec 1/h^2$ or $1-q\prec 1/h^2$, then with hight probability $X_{\Sigma}$ es smooth, \item[(2)] If $q\succ 1/h^2$ and $1-q\succ 1/h^2$, then with hight probability $X_{\Sigma}$ es singular. \end{itemize} An immediate consequence is that, for a fixed real $p$ such that $0<p<1$, then for a fan $\Sigma$ chosen with respect to $T(h,p)$, with hight probability $X_{\Sigma}$ is singular. Finally, as the author remarks, the constructions and some of the results are analogues of constructions and results of the theory of random graphs as in [\textit{P. Erdös} and \textit{A. Rényi}, Pub. Math. Debrecen 6, 290--297 (1959; Zbl 0092.15705)]. Moreover, the constructions are totally dependent on the $2$-dimensions and there is no obvious way to generalized them to higher dimensions.