On Chow quotients of torus actions (Q887898)

The paper deals with actions of algebraic tori \(T\) on normal projective varieties \(X\) over an algebraically closed field \(k\) of characteristic \(0\). In the first part, the authors compare the Chow quotient of \(X\) by \(T\) (the closure of the locus of sufficiently nice \(T\)-orbits within the Chow variety) with the main component of the inverse limit of all GIT-quotients. By a result of \textit{Y. Hu} [J. Differ. Geom. 69, No. 3, 399--440 (2005; Zbl 1087.14032)], the normalizations of both coincide. However, since this is combinatorially evident when \(T\) acts as a subtorus of \(T_X\) on a toric variety \(X\), this situation serves as a good starting point for an alternative proof being presented here. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate a special setting, namely \(X\) being a smooth projective quadric and \(T=k^*\). The authors show that the associated Chow quotient \(Y\) is a Mori dream space, and they calculate its Cox ring explicitly in terms of the given weights of the action. The main tools for this are so-called weak tropical resolutions of the Chow quotient (in \S5) and tracing changes of the Cox ring of varieties under birational operations on their toric ambient spaces.