1.1.6. Degenerating toric Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces [03YI]
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1.1.6. Degenerating toric Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces
A familiar picture from Riemann surface theory is that higher genus algebraic curves can be obtained topologically by patching together ‘pairs of pants’ along cylindrical necks. There is a similar picture for Calabi-Yau toric hypersurfaces approaching a large complex structure limit, well studied in tropical geometry. The discussions below are loosely based on Zharkov [32][31], and are included to predict the holomorphic structure of the positive and the negative vertices.
Let be a toric manifold whose moment polytope is the reflexive integral polytope in , so the integral points correspond to a basis for anticanonical sections. Let be a (suitably generic) function on whose piecewise linear extension is a convex function on minimized at with minimum value 0. We consider a polarised family of hypersurfaces defined by
| (1.4) |
where are fixed nonzero complex numbers and is a small positive parameter. The holomorphic volume form is determined from the adjunction formula.
The key point is that when is very small, the hypersurface decompose into a finite number of regions, on each of which only a small number of monomial functions dominate the rest. Thus up to scaling coordinates by powers of , there are only a small number of complex geometric local models, typically with some torus symmetry. Furthermore there is some combinatorial structure which controls how these local models patch together to give as a complex manifold.
Example 1.1.
(Generic region) Suppose in some region only and dominate, so the hypersurface locally looks like . After normalising by powers of we may write this as in the coordinates on the algebraic torus . This model has -symmetry under the diagonal action on . The -orbits are the natural candidate for approximate SYZ fibres. Thus we naturally look for a Kähler metric with potential depending only on the logarithms . The holomorphic volume form on the hypersurface is up to a scale factor given by
namely . The complex Monge-Ampère equation naturally reduces to the real Monge-Ampère equation . One can further calculate that such regions take up most of the volume measure on , thus lending some evidence for the SYZ conjecture. We remark that the description only applies to local regions so the metrics are not complete.
Example 1.2.
The real Monge-Ampère equation governs also the region near the intersection of with a smooth component of the toric boundary. Suppose after normalising by powers of , the dominant monomials are in the coordinates on the algebraic torus , so the hypersurface has the local complex geometric model , or equivalently . The adjunction formula
leads to as before. The diagonal -action on provides the candidate for an approximate SYZ fibration, and a solution to the real Monge-Ampère equation in the coordinates induces a local Calabi-Yau metric.
Example 1.3.
Suppose after normalising by powers of , the dominant monomials are , so the hypersurface admits the local complex geometric model , or equivalently . This happens near the intersection of two smooth components of the toric boundary. Up to numerical factors, the holomorphic volume form is given by
namely . This model has a natural -symmetry: one acts trivially on and rotates , while the other acts trivially on and diagonally on . The model is intimately related to the Ooguri-Vafa metric (cf. Section 1.3.2), and we expect this region to coincide with the neighbourhood of edges in the Gross-Ruan-Joyce picture.
In this paper we are primarily interested in the positive and negative vertices. These are relevant for certain regions near the intersection of with some higher depth strata of the toric boundary of .
Example 1.4.
The positive vertex describes a neighbourhood of the point inside . In the toric hypersurface picture, we are looking at a region where the dominating monomials are up to scale factors , so the defining equation of is approximately once we absorb the scale factors into . The holomorphic volume form is up to constant given by
or equivalently . An important feature of this model is the diagonal -symmetry:
We have , where is a holomorphic coordinate with period 1, and takes the value zero at . The relation between this complex geometric perspective and the topological picture in Section 1.1.3 is perhaps clearest with the generalised Gibbons-Hawking construction in mind (cf. Section 1.2 below). Essentially is a singular -bundle over a 4-dimensional base contained in , where are the -moment maps normalised to have value 0 at . We shall notice that the discriminant locus of this singular -bundle is not sensitive to the choice of the Kähler form (cf. Lemma 1.6 and its ensuing Remark). The normalising constant on imply that the SYZ -fibres have .
Example 1.5.
The negative vertex describes an open subset inside . In the toric hypersurface picture, we are looking at a region where the dominating monomials are up to scale factors just , , and 1, so the defining equation of is approximately once we absorb the scale factors into . The holomorphic volume form is given up to constant by
or equivalently This model has -symmetry:
Hence is a singular -bundle over , where is the -moment coordinate which takes the value zero on the singular locus (notice that the degeneracy of the factor implies that the moment map is constant on this singular locus for any choice of Kähler form). This agrees with the modified topological description in Section 1.1.5. We calculate
where the logarithmic coordinates for have period 1. The coordinates provide a family of 2-tori in , and the restriction of the -bundle over these 2-tori defines a family of 3-tori. The normalising constant on imply that .