Star subdivision

This operation is a fan subdivision. A star subdivision inserts a ray through a lattice point in a cone and subdivides every cone containing that point. It induces a proper birational toric morphism.

On a smooth toric variety, the blowup along the orbit closure in a toric variety of a cone generated by part of a lattice basis $v_1,\dots ,v_k$ is the star subdivision at their sum. Locally the center has ideal $(x_1,\dots ,x_k)$; its blowup charts adjoin $x_j/x_i$, producing precisely these subdivided cones. This extends the toric blowup at a torus-fixed point to invariant centers of any codimension.

If a smooth maximal cone is generated by a lattice basis $e_1,\dots ,e_n$, its star subdivision through $e_1+\cdots +e_n$ is the fan of the blowup at the corresponding torus-fixed point.

For an ample invariant divisor $D$ and the blowup $\pi$ of a torus-fixed smooth point in dimension at least two, $c{\pi }^{\ast }D-E$ is ample for sufficiently large integers $c$. In the subdivided cone, its local characters are $c{m}_{\sigma }+u_i$, where $u_i$ is dual to the omitted ray generator. The new strict inequalities have gap one on the omitted ray and grow linearly with $c$ elsewhere, proving the claim by the toric ampleness criterion.

The blowup of ${\mathbb{A}}^n$ at the origin is the total space of the tautological line bundle ${\mathcal{O}}_{{\mathbb{P}}^{n-1}}(-1)$. Its exceptional divisor is the zero section ${\mathbb{P}}^{n-1}$, and projection to the direction of a line gives the bundle map to ${\mathbb{P}}^{n-1}$.

A toric resolution of singularities is obtained by subdividing a fan until every cone is generated by part of a lattice basis. The resulting smooth toric variety maps properly and birationally to the original one.

For this toric cone, one smooth fan subdivision has maximal cones $abc,acd$ and no exceptional divisors. Another has $abd,bce,cde,dbe$, with $e=a+c=(b+c+d)/2$. Its only exceptional divisor is a projective plane, since the quotient fan at $e$ has the three rays $\bar{b},\bar{c},\bar{d}$ with sum zero and unimodular neighboring cones. Both subdivisions admit no proper smooth coarsening. Their common smooth refinement is obtained from the first by adding $e$ in $ac$ and then $w=a+e$ in $ae$, and from the second by adding $w=b+d$ in $bd$. Each step is a toric blowup along an orbit closure.

First make a toric fan simplicial by compatible rational subdivisions. In a nonregular simplicial cone, choose a nonregular face minimal under inclusion. Its half-open fundamental parallelepiped contains a nonzero point of the toric lattice $w={\sum }_i{\alpha }_i{v}_i$, with every $0<{\alpha }_i<1$: a zero coefficient would put it in a regular proper face and force all coefficients to be integers. A star subdivision at the primitive point on this ray replaces a generator by $w$ and multiplies the affected lattice determinant by a number strictly between zero and one. The maximum multiplicity and the number of maximal cones realizing it decrease lexicographically, giving a finite toric resolution of singularities.

For the cyclic quotient surface singularity $\frac{1}{r}(1,q)$, expand $r/q=[b_1,\dots ,b_s{]}^{-}$ with $b_i\ge 2$. In the quotient lattice, start with $v_0=(0,1)$, $v_1=(1,q)/r$, and set $v_{i+1}=b_i{v}_i-v_{i-1}$. The last vector is $(1,0)$, each consecutive pair is a lattice basis, and subdivision by these rays is a resolution. Its exceptional chain has self-intersections $-b_i$. None is a minus-one curve, so the resolution is minimal. All coefficients are two exactly for $q=r-1$.

// Target: geometry-and-topology.bigb

In a smooth complete toric surface, if consecutive primitive rays are $u,w,v$ and $u+v=aw$, then the invariant divisor $D_w$ has $D_w^2=-a$. A ray introduced inside a cone by a smooth subdivision has $a>0$, so its divisor has negative self-intersection.

A compact invariant curve with consecutive rays $u,v,w$ on a smooth toric surface contracts torically to a smooth point exactly when $u+w=v$, equivalently when its self-intersection is $-1$. Deleting $v$ then reverses a toric blowup at a torus-fixed point.

// Target: geometry-and-topology.bigb