Continuity of heights in families and complete intersections in toric varieties

Abstract

We study the variation of heights of cycles in flat families over number fields or, more generally, globally valued fields. To a finite type scheme over a GVF we associate a locally compact Hausdorff space which we refer to as its GVF analytification. For a flat projective family, we prove that the height of fibres is a continuous function on the GVF analytification of the base. As an application, we prove Roberto Gualdi's conjecture on limit heights of complete intersections in toric varieties.