Toric degenerations of GIT quotients, Chow quotients, and \(\overline {M}_{0,n}\) (Q937813)

The moduli space \(\overline{M}_{0,n}\) contains a toric variety as a dense open subset but is not a toric variety if \(n\geq 5\). The main purpose of this paper is to show that it degenerates to a toric variety in a flat family. This is in fact a special case of a more general result, proved here, that shows that many Chow quotients have flat toric degeneration: then one applies Kapranov's result that \(\overline{M}_{0,n}\) is the Chow quotient of the Grassmannian \(\text{ Gr}\,(2,{\mathbb C}^n)\) by the maximal torus. First, one shows that a GIT quotient of a flat family is again flat. More precisely, if \(f\colon Y \to B\) is a flat family of projective varieties over an integral base \(B\), \(G\) is a reductive algebraic group acting algebraically on \(Y\) and preserving fibres, and \(L\) is a \(G\)-linearised ample line bundle on \(Y\), then the induced family \(\underline{\smash{f}}\colon Y^{ss}(L)/\!/G\to B\) is flat. Next, assume that for some \(0\in B\) the fibre \(Y_0\) is a toric variety and that \(G\) is a subtorus of the maximal torus in \(Y_0\). Then the central fibre of \(\underline{\smash{f}}\) is a toric variety, so the general fibre has a flat toric degeneration. If \(B\) is projective, there is also the Chow quotient family \(f^{ch}\colon Y/\!/^{ch}G\to B\), and this is also flat at least when \(B\) is a smooth curve. This can now be applied to Chow quotients of Grassmannians of flag varieties. Apart from the application given above, there are numerous other moduli spaces that can be described as such Chow quotients. A final section is devoted to describing the toric variety that arises as the central fibre in the case of a certain degeneration of flag manifolds,and in particular a degeneration \(\overline{N}_{0,n}\) of \(\overline{M}_{0,n}\). But there are many choices involved in selecting the original family \(Y\), and the \(\overline{N}_{0,n}\) described is a particular, though interesting, one.