Commutative algebraic monoid structures on affine surfaces (Q1998926)

The authors classify all normal, irreducible, 2-dimensional, commutative algebraic monoids over an algebraically closed field \(\Bbbk\) of characteristic zero. Since any irreducible algebraic monoid \(M\) is a group embedding of its units group \(G(M)\), any commutative algebraic group is an embedding of \(G_m^r\times G_a^n\), where \(G_a=(\Bbbk,+)\) and \(G_m=(\Bbbk^*,\cdot)\); let \(r\) be the rank of the monoid. In order to produce their classification, the authors characterize all normal irreducible affine commutative algebraic monoids of rank \(0,n-1\) and \(n\), generalizing in this way a result by \textit{I. Arzhantsev} et al. [Commun. Contemp. Math. 22, No. 8, Article ID 1950064, 23 p. (2020; Zbl 1454.14150)] on commutative monoid structures on affine spaces. The authors provide a description of the monoid structures on the affine surface \(M\) by describing the associated comutiplication \(\Bbbk[M]\to\Bbbk[M]\otimes \Bbbk[M]\) in terms of the Demazure roots. If follows from the classification that an affine surface \(M\) that admits a monoid structure is a toric variety: the authors also give a description of\(M\) and its monoid structure in terms of the associated Cox ring.