Volume and lattice points of reflexive simplices

We prove sharp upper bounds on the volume and the number of lattice points on edges of higher-dimensional reflexive simplices. These convex-geometric results are derived from new number-theoretic bounds on the denominators of unit fractions summing up to one. The main algebro-geometric application is a sharp upper bound on the anticanonical degree of higher-dimensional Q-factorial Gorenstein toric Fano varieties with Picard number one, where we completely characterize the case of equality.Comment: AMS-LaTeX, 19 pages; paper reorganized, introduction added, bibliography updated; typos correcte

A bound for the splitting of smooth Fano polytopes with many vertices

The classification of toric Fano manifolds with large Picard number corresponds to the classification of smooth Fano polytopes with large number of vertices. A smooth Fano polytope is a polytope that contains the origin in its interior such that the vertex set of each facet forms a lattice basis. Casagrande showed that any smooth $d$-dimensional Fano polytope has at most $3d$ vertices. Smooth Fano polytopes in dimension $d$ with at least $3d-2$ vertices are completely known. The main result of this paper deals with the case of $3d-k$ vertices for $k$ fixed and $d$ large. It implies that there is only a finite number of isomorphism classes of toric Fano $d$-folds $X$ (for arbitrary $d$) with Picard number $2d-k$ such that $X$ is not a product of a lower-dimensional toric Fano manifold and the projective plane blown up in three torus-invariant points. This verifies the qualitative part of a conjecture in a recent paper by the first author, Joswig, and Paffenholz.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

Complete toric varieties with reductive automorphism group

We give equivalent and sufficient criteria for the automorphism group of a complete toric variety, respectively a Gorenstein toric Fano variety, to be reductive. In particular we show that the automorphism group of a Gorenstein toric Fano variety is reductive, if the barycenter of the associated reflexive polytope is zero. Furthermore a sharp bound on the dimension of the reductive automorphism group of a complete toric variety is proven by studying the set of Demazure roots.Comment: AMS-LaTeX, 20 pages with 1 figur

A boundedness result for toric log Del Pezzo surfaces

In this paper we give an upper bound for the Picard number of the rational surfaces which resolve minimally the singularities of toric log Del Pezzo surfaces of given index $\ell$. This upper bound turns out to be a quadratic polynomial in the variable $\ell$.Comment: 10 pages; final version (typos corrected, references updated