Combinatorial construction of toric residues. (Q1777624)

The main object of the paper under review is an \(n\)-dimensional complete toric variety \(X\) arising from a collection \(f_0,\dots ,f_n\) of sparse Laurent polynomials in \(n\) variables as follows: consider the Newton polytopes \(P_0,\dots ,P_n\) corresponding to the \(f_i\)'s, then \(X\) is defined as the toric variety corresponding to the Minkowski sum \(P\) of the \(P_i\)'s. In the homogeneous coordinate ring \(S\) of \(X\) each \(f_i\) can be homogenized to a polynomial \(F_i\) of degree \(\alpha_i\) corresponding to the class of the semi-ample divisor \(P_i\). The toric residue on \(X\) corresponding to the collection \(F=(F_0,\dots ,F_n)\) is a linear function on homogeneous polynomials \(H\) of a certain critical degree [see \textit{D.~A.~Cox}, Ark. Math. 34, 73--96 (1996; Zbl 0904.14029) and \textit{E.~Cattani, D. Cox} and \textit{A.~Dickenstein}, Compos. Math. 108, 35--76 (1997; Zbl 0883.14029)]. The authors' goal is to find an element with toric residue \(\pm 1\). They prove that such an element exists provided the collection \(P_0,\dots ,P_n\) is essential, i.e. for every proper subset \(I\) of \(\{0,\dots ,n\}\) the dimension of the polytope \(\sum_{i\in I}P_i\) is at least \(| I| \). Moreover, they develop a combinatorial approach allowing one to find such an element in an explicit way. They present complete results in two cases: 1) when the \(P_i\)'s share a complete flag of faces; 2) for \(n=2\).