Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 17 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the toric scheme over a base ring construction over . Take the cocharacter lattice of an algebraic torus and dual character lattice of an algebraic torus . For every , setThese cones in toric geometry, together with their rays and the zero cone, form an infinite fan in toric geometry. Adjacent two-dimensional cones meet in their common ray; all other pairs meet only at zero. Thus the face and intersection axioms hold even though there are infinitely many charts.
The consecutive vectors are a basis of , since their determinant is . The dual cone has integral generatorswith , , , . Its integral points form the free commutative monoid . Hence the associated semigroup algebra chart is simplyOn the dense algebraic torus, write and . The chart coordinates areAlthough these expressions use inverses on the torus, are regular on the indicated charts.
The common-ray chart of and is , identified with byThe inverse is , . Nonadjacent charts meet in the common dense torus, and all transition maps agree there with the same characters of an algebraic torus , so their cocycle identities follow. By gluing of schemes along open subschemes, these charts construct a scheme .
The lattice projection carries every into the nonnegative ray of the fan of the affine line. It therefore defines a toric morphismExplicitly its pullback on each chart sends to . The adjacent-chart formula preserves that product, so the local morphisms glue.
Compute its scheme-theoretic fibre over :This is the union of the two coordinate affine lines, each with multiplicity one. Let denote the toric divisor corresponding to . Its part in is , with coordinate ; its part in is , with coordinate . On the overlap these coordinates satisfy . Consequently these two affine lines glue toThe neighbouring components meet at the section , isomorphic to . No other components meet. Every special-fibre chart has exactly these two branches and no embedded or extra components. ThusThe union is an infinite chain, not a finite-type curve disguised as one: its infinitely many components account for the infinitely many toric charts.
Over the principal open subset , both and are units because their product is . Every chart then becomes the same torus chart:The transition maps identify the coordinate exactly, soThis is the generic region described in the question; over the actual generic point of its fibre is .
The construction is also flat. Indeed, each node chart has a free -module basisEvery monomial reduces uniquely by taking out , and the resulting monomials are independent. Thus the chart morphisms are flat morphisms. This verifies directly that the semistable infinite chain from a toric fan is a degeneration of the multiplicative group scheme rather than an unrelated special fibre.
The infinite toric fan, its chain of projective lines, and the period-three quotient fibre
. Details. Semistable infinite chain from a toric fan 2026-10-14
Take rays and cones generated by consecutive rays in . Their dual generators and give , . Adjacent charts glue by , . The fibre is a chain of projective lines: each component has two affine-line charts joined by reciprocal coordinates, and consecutive components meet at one node. Inverting identifies all charts with the multiplicative group scheme over . The local node algebra is free over , with basis for , so the morphism is flat.
// Target: toric-geometry.bigb
Split algebraic torus 2026-11-05
A split algebraic torus over a field is an algebraic group isomorphic over to a product of multiplicative group schemes. Its coordinate ring is the Laurent polynomial ringand its -points are . Choosing such an isomorphism supplies torus coordinates; the torus need not come with preferred coordinates.
Every algebraic torus character is a monomial with integer exponents. The character group is therefore , and cocharacters form the dual lattice. This integral structure makes split tori the dense groups in ordinary fan-based toric geometry.
The adjective split concerns the field of definition, not connectedness of the real points. For example, is split over although has two connected components. The real norm-one algebraic torus from is connected as a real circle but is nonsplit. [ref]
Algebraic Groups, Lie Groups, and their Arithmetic Subgroups by James S. Milne. ChapterI section14, tori and character modules
