Toric Hyperkähler Varieties

Extending work of Bielawski-Dancer [3] and Konno [12], we develop a theory of toric hyperkähler varieties, which involves toric geometry, matroid theory and convex polyhedra. The framework is a detailed study of semi-projective toric varieties, meaning GIT quotients of affine spaces by torus actions, and specifically, of Lawrence toric varieties, meaning GIT quotients of even-dimensional affine spaces by symplectic torus actions. A toric hyperkähler variety is a complete intersection in a Lawrence toric variety. Both varieties are noncompact, and they share the same cohomology ring, namely, the Stanley-Reisner ring of a matroid modulo a linear system of parameters. Familiar applications of toric geometry to combinatorics, including the Hard Lefschetz Theorem and the volume polynomials of Khovanskii-Pukhlikov [10], are extended to the hyperkähler setting. When the matroid is graphic, our construction gives the toric quiver varieties, in the sense of Nakajima [15].