0 D ec 1 99 9 Toric Prevarieties and Subtorus Actions Annette

Dropping separatedness in the definition of a toric variety, one obtains the more general notion of a toric prevariety. Toric prevarieties occur as ambient spaces in algebraic geometry and moreover they appear naturally as intermediate steps in quotient constructions. We first provide a complete description of the category of toric prevarieties in terms of convex–geometrical data, so–called systems of fans. In a second part, we consider actions of subtori H of the big torus of a toric prevariety X and investigate quotients for such actions. Using our language of systems of fans, we characterize existence of good prequotients for the action of H on X. Moreover, we show by means of an algorithmic construction that there always exists a toric prequotient for the action of H on X, that means an H–invariant toric morphism p from X to a toric prevariety Y such that every H–invariant toric morphism from X to a toric prevariety factors through p. Finally, generalizing a result of D. Cox, we prove that every toric prevariety X occurs as the image of a categorical prequotient of an open toric subvariety of some Cs.