a Toric Scheme
Christian D. Forero P.
In order to talk about toric schemes it is necessary
to understand some concepts such as schemes
and toric varieties before. The aim of this note is
to revive these concepts and introduce toric schemes.
Schemes where first introduced by Grothendieck
[GD60], and are a fundamental concept in mod-
ern mathematics. The fundamental idea behind
them, is that any commutative ring R with iden-
tity can be understood as the functions on a
particular topological space, actually this space
comes with more “structur”, a locally ringed
space (i.e. a sheaf or rings whose stalks are
local rings, analogues of germs of functions).
The space whose functions
Elements are the elements of R is
of a ring are Spec R, the collection of
functions prime ideals of R endowed
on some with the topology where
space. the close sets are V (p),
the prime ideal containing
p ∈ Spec R for any prime ideal p, or equivalently
where a basis for the topology is the collection of
sets Df of prime ideals that don’t containSf ∈ R.
And the structure sheaf is defined for U = i∈I Dfi
an open set as O(U ) := limi∈I Rfi , which in fact
defines a locally ringed space.
An affine scheme is a locally ringed space iso-
morphic to Spec R for some ring R. A scheme is
a locally ringed space that has a cover of affine
schemes (one can image some affine schemes
“glued” together), which is similar to the case
of affine varieties and varieties since schemes
generalize a vast amount of concepts including
varieties. Schemes allow to expand constructions of
varieties over fields (usually closed fields) to rings
in general (even with nilpotents). For instance
there is similar construction of the functor (we have
discuss the functorial nature of schemes in detail)
Spec by analogy with projective varieties, Proj
Instructor: Mauricio Velasco UniAndes
which takes graded rings to “projective” schemes
L (a
generalization of projective
L varieties). If S S
i≥0 i
is a graded ring and S+ i>0 Si then Proj S is the
collection of homogeneos prime ideal that don’t
contain S+ and we give it almost the same structure
of topological space and scheme as before (changing
the localizations by its subring S(p) consisting of
fractions of homogeneous elements of the same
degree). Schemes also allow to formulate in a more
concrete way some solving-problem methods in
algebraic geometry, so one might think how natural
it is to generalize specific algebraic varieties to
schemes. In the case of toric varieties not much
have been done.
As for the concept of toric varieties, even though
different equivalent definitions exists, perhaps the
most concrete definition is; an algebraic variety
over the complex numbers (it could over any
algebraically close field) with an open torus (C∗ )n
inside whose action extends to the entire variety.
Toric varieties emerge in various scenarios such as
symplectic geometry, algebraic geometry, theoretical
physics, and commutative algebra. Conceivably, the
importance of these mathematical objects is that
they serve as specific examples of varieties that are
usually understood in particular contexts because
of their natural connection with combinatorics, as
we shall see.
Let ∆ be a fan in N ∼ = Zn (i.e. a collec-
tion of cones closed under taking intersec-
tions and faces that does not contain a sub-
space) as in Figure 1 (in which case the fan is
∆ = {σ0 , σ1 , σ2 , σ0 ∪σ1 , σ1 ∪σ2 , σ2 ∪σ0 , σ0 ∪σ1 ∪σ2 }),
and let M , σ ∨ := {l ∈ M |hl, ρi∀ρ ∈ σ} be the duals
of N and a cone σ ∈ ∆ respectively. We define
the affine varieties Uσ as Spec C[σ ∨ ∩ M ] for every
cone σ. Note that {0} belongs to every fan, and
the affine variety associated to it is the torus (C∗ )n .
Finally, we say X(∆) is the variety that results from
Page 1 of 3
“gluing” {Uσ }σ∈∆ in such a way that the ordering
of cones τ  σ (τ is a subcone of σ) are respected.
[Ful93].
Figure 1: Fan associated to the variety P2 .
For example, the fan shown in Figure 1 the affine va-
rieties Uσ0 = Spec C[x, y], Uσ1 = Spec C[x−1 , x−1 y]
and Uσ2 = Spec C[y −1 , xy −1 ] must be “glued” along
their unions (Uσi ∩σj ), these 3 open A2 are embedded
in X(∆) just like the natural inclusion in P2 , in fact
X(∆) ∼ = P2 . For this example one can use the Proj
scheme notation and show X(∆) ∼ = Proj C[x, y].
It is important to observe
for our purposes that in a Fans are
more abstract sense, a fan projective
is a projective system of
monoids (in this context it
systems of
only means that for every monoids.
two faces ¡¡subcones¿¿ of a cone there is a face that
is face of each of the faces). In general we have that
given a ring R and a monoid M , R[M ] is a R-algebra,
and this is exactly what happens in the construction
of toric varieties, for example when R = C and the
monoid is just a cone, or abusing the notation let M
the dual lattice of N (as before), then R[M ] = (C∗ )n
which is a R-algebra, and the same for Uσ . So a pos-
sible generalization of the construction X(∆) could
be for any M projective monoid over a preorder set
I with some “niceness” conditions a similar gluing
of the collection of affine schemes
Spec R[M(i)] for i ∈ I,
to construct the scheme XM (R) over the ring R
(the “niceness” conditions are necessary in order to
“glue” the schemes).
The work of Kempf on toroidal embeddings [GK73]
might be considered as the first appearance of
toric varieties directly working with a torus, and
deriving combinatoric structure associated to the
usual methods now days for toric varieties (for
Instructor: Mauricio Velasco UniAndes
instance resolution of singularities) in a systematic
way, it is also probably the first intent to extend the
notion of toric varieties from algebraically closed
fields to discret valuation rings. But for a more
generalize (basisi change point of view), taking
into account the above discussion, and with the
intention to fully extract the combinatorial aspect
to a generalization, we pluck up courage and follow
the analisis made by Rohrer [Roh12]. We say that
XM (R) as constructed before is a toric scheme, and
the toric scheme associated with with a fan ∆ over
the ring R is X∆ (R) where ∆ is understood as a
projective system of monoids with the order.
Even though one can construct a toric variety
which is not projective, and similarly not every
projective variety is toric (for example elliptic
curves), toric and projective varieties share some
properties. In order to see this it is necessary to
introduce the idea of Cox Ring (it can be define
also the cox scheme).
The homogeneous coordinate ring [Cox95] (Cox
Ring) of a toric variety X(∆) is the graded ring
S := C[xρ : ρ ∈ ∆(1)]
Where ∆(1) are 1-dimensional faces of the fan ∆.
Note that any divisor of the variety can be uniquely
determine by a monomial of S. The Cox Ring hap-
pens to be a graded ring (for the experience reader
the degree of a monomial is class of the associated
divisor in the An−1 (X) chow group). For example
for the Figure 1 the Cox Ring is C[x0 , x1 , x2 ] with
the standard grading (for X = Pn the Cox Ring is
C[x0 , x1 , . . . , xn ] with the standard grading). Cox
Rings may be define not only for toric varieties with
the theory of divisors, but in the particular given
a fan one can define a the Cox Ring as above, and
this gives rise to a graded version of the algebra of
monoids described before that goes as follows.
Let {δ}δ∈∆(1) be the canonical base of the monoid
N|∆(1)| , and for σ ∈ ∆ we set
X
δ̂σ := δρ ∈ N|∆(1)|
ρ∈∆(1)\σ1
Where σ1 are the 1-dimensional faces of σ. Let
N|∆(1)| − δ̂σ be the difference of monoids (i.e. declar-
ing the negatives of the elements of δ̂σ ⊆ N|∆(1)| ).
Then the family {N|∆(1)| − δ̂σ }σ∈∆ give rise to a pro-
jective system of submonoids of Z|∆(1)| (not exactly
this family, but each element intersected with the
kernel of some restricting function). This projec-
tive system of monoids is “nice” enough so that it
Page 2 of 3
 define a scheme, as we discuss earlier, and we call
this scheme Y∆ (R), the cox scheme. Due to the con-
struction of both X∆ (R) (made from the complete
fan) and Y∆ (R) (made from the 1-dimensional cones
of the fan), exist a natural morphism that in some
cases is in fact a isomorphism [Roh12]

Y∆ (R) X∆ (R)

This rich description of toric schemes lead to

profound results that generalise results of projective
varieties and projective schemes (such as Serre-
Grothendieck correspondence) for toric varieties
and toric schemes. As promise, after discussing
a little about cox rings we will try to emphasize
the relation between this two different kinds of
varieties. The profound connection comes from
“graded nature” of Cox Rings which coincide with
the toric scheme and the “graded nature” of the
Proj construction, so it is possible to replicate some
proof for projective schemes.

The short motivation and introduction pre-

sented in this note will hopefully lead to a better
understanding of toric schemes (and, as a special
case, toric varieties) and provide a useful basis for
future work.

References
[Cox95] David Cox. The homogeneous coordinate ring of
a toric variety. Journal of Algebraic Geometry, 4, 01 1995.

[Ful93] William Fulton. An introduction to toric varieties.

131, 01 1993.
[GD60] A. Grothendieck and J. Dieudonné. Eléments de
géométrie algébrique Part I:4; Part II:2; Part III; Part
IV. Publications Mathématiques de l’Institut des Hautes
Études Scientifiques, 4, 01 1960.
[GK73] D. Mumford B. Saint-Donat G. Kempf, F. Knud-
sen. Toroidal embeddings 1. 339:210, 01 1973.
[Roh12] Fred Rohrer. The geometry of toric schemes.
Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, 217, 07 2012.

Instructor: Mauricio Velasco UniAndes Page 3 of 3