Embedding of Calabi-Yau deformations into toric varieties (Q2574907)

This paper is a sequel to [Invent. Math. 157, No. 3, 621--633 (2004; Zbl 1057.14068)], in which the author constructed so-called ``non-polynomial'' deformations of Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in toric varieties. Here, these deformations are realised as subvarieties of toric varieties themselves, as quasi-smooth complete intersections. This is interesting in itself, but it also leads to some intriguing speculations. As the deformations are not nef in their toric ambient space (even though the original Calabi-Yau is: the main result extends to nef Calabi-Yau complete intersections in toric varieties) it becomes desirable to study non-nef Calabi-Yau complete intersections and then, naturally, their deformation theory too. A bold speculation of the author's is to suggest that perhaps every Calabi-Yau is a complete intersection in a toric variety. Less ambitiously, and correspondingly more confidently, he conjectures that extremal transitions (contractions followed by smoothing) preserve the property of being a Calabi-Yau complete intersection in a toric variety, and that all such complete intersections are connected by chains of extremal transitions. The paper consists of the above conjectures; a recapitulation of the background; some motivating examples of non-polynomial deformations, in which the ambient space is a weighted projective space, showing how to construct the toric varieties and embed the defoemd Calabi-Yau's in them; and the general construction, which is similar to the examples. The hard part is guessing the ambient spaces, that is, the right fan.