Notes on toric varieties

Abstract

These notes survey some basic results in toric varieties over a field with examples and applications. A computer algebra package (written by the second author) is described which deals with both affine and projective toric varieties in any number of dimensions (written in both the software packages MAGMA and GAP). Among other things, the package implements a desingularization procedure for affine toric varieties, constructs some error-correcting codes associated with toric varieties, and computes the Riemann-Roch space of a divisor on a toric variety.