No Arabic abstract
We introduce a class of Laurent polynomials, called maximally mutable Laurent polynomials (MMLPs), that we believe correspond under mirror symmetry to Fano varieties. A subclass of these, called rigid, are expected to correspond to Fano varieties with terminal locally toric singularities. We prove that there are exactly 10 mutation classes of rigid MMLPs in two variables; under mirror symmetry these correspond one-to-one with the 10 deformation classes of smooth del~Pezzo surfaces. Furthermore we give a computer-assisted classification of rigid MMLPs in three variables with reflexive Newton polytope; under mirror symmetry these correspond one-to-one with the 98 deformation classes of three-dimensional Fano manifolds with very ample anticanonical bundle. We compare our proposal to previous approaches to constructing mirrors to Fano varieties, and explain why mirror symmetry in higher dimensions necessarily involves varieties with terminal singularities. Every known mirror to a Fano manifold, of any dimension, is a rigid MMLP.
There are well-understood methods, going back to Givental and Hori--Vafa, that to a Fano toric complete intersection X associate a Laurent polynomial f that corresponds to X under mirror symmetry. We describe a technique for inverting this process, constructing the toric complete intersection X directly from its Laurent polynomial mirror f. We use this technique to construct a new four-dimensional Fano manifold.
We describe a practical and effective method for reconstructing the deformation class of a Fano manifold X from a Laurent polynomial f that corresponds to X under Mirror Symmetry. We explore connections to nef partitions, the smoothing of singular toric varieties, and the construction of embeddings of one (possibly-singular) toric variety in another. In particular, we construct degenerations from Fano manifolds to singular toric varieties; in the toric complete intersection case, these degenerations were constructed previously by Doran--Harder. We use our method to find models of orbifold del Pezzo surfaces as complete intersections and degeneracy loci, and to construct a new four-dimensional Fano manifold.
We study quantum algorithms that are given access to trusted and untrusted quantum witnesses. We establish strong limitations of such algorithms, via new techniques based on Laurent polynomials (i.e., polynomials with positive and negative integer exponents). Specifically, we resolve the complexity of approximate counting, the problem of multiplicatively estimating the size of a nonempty set $S subseteq [N]$, in two natural generalizations of quantum query complexity. Our first result holds in the standard Quantum Merlin--Arthur ($mathsf{QMA}$) setting, in which a quantum algorithm receives an untrusted quantum witness. We show that, if the algorithm makes $T$ quantum queries to $S$, and also receives an (untrusted) $m$-qubit quantum witness, then either $m = Omega(|S|)$ or $T=Omega bigl(sqrt{N/left| Sright| } bigr)$. This is optimal, matching the straightforward protocols where the witness is either empty, or specifies all the elements of $S$. As a corollary, this resolves the open problem of giving an oracle separation between $mathsf{SBP}$, the complexity class that captures approximate counting, and $mathsf{QMA}$. In our second result, we ask what if, in addition to a membership oracle for $S$, a quantum algorithm is also given QSamples -- i.e., copies of the state $left| Srightrangle = frac{1}{sqrt{left| Sright| }} sum_{iin S}|irangle$ -- or even access to a unitary transformation that enables QSampling? We show that, even then, the algorithm needs either $Theta bigl(sqrt{N/left| Sright| }bigr)$ queries or else $Theta bigl(min bigl{left| Sright| ^{1/3}, sqrt{N/left| Sright| }bigr}bigr)$ QSamples or accesses to the unitary. Our lower bounds in both settings make essential use of Laurent polynomials, but in different ways.
The classification of Fano varieties is an important open question, motivated in part by the MMP. Smooth Fano varieties have been classified up to dimension three: one interesting feature of this classification is that they can all be described as certain subvarieties in GIT quotients; in particular, they are all either toric complete intersections (subvarieties of toric varieties) or quiver flag zero loci (subvarieties of quiver flag varieties). There is a program to use mirror symmetry to classify Fano varieties in higher dimensions. Fano varieties are expected to correspond to certain Laurent polynomials under mirror symmetry; given such a Fano toric complete intersections, one can produce a Laurent polynomial via the Hori--Vafa mirror. In this paper, we give a method to find Laurent polynomial mirrors to Fano quiver flag zero loci in $Y$-shaped quiver flag varieties. To do this, we generalise the Gelfand--Cetlin degeneration of type A flag varieties to Fano $Y$-shaped quiver flag varieties, and give a new description of these degenerations as canonical toric quiver varieties. We find conjectural mirrors to 99 four dimensional Fano quiver flag zero loci, and check them up to 20 terms of the period sequence.
An $(n,r,h,a,q)$-Local Reconstruction Code is a linear code over $mathbb{F}_q$ of length $n$, whose codeword symbols are partitioned into $n/r$ local groups each of size $r$. Each local group satisfies `$a$ local parity checks to recover from `$a$ erasures in that local group and there are further $h$ global parity checks to provide fault tolerance from more global erasure patterns. Such an LRC is Maximally Recoverable (MR), if it offers the best blend of locality and global erasure resilience -- namely it can correct all erasure patterns whose recovery is information-theoretically feasible given the locality structure (these are precisely patterns with up to `$a$ erasures in each local group and an additional $h$ erasures anywhere in the codeword). Random constructions can easily show the existence of MR LRCs over very large fields, but a major algebraic challenge is to construct MR LRCs, or even show their existence, over smaller fields, as well as understand inherent lower bounds on their field size. We give an explicit construction of $(n,r,h,a,q)$-MR LRCs with field size $q$ bounded by $left(Oleft(max{r,n/r}right)right)^{min{h,r-a}}$. This improves upon known constructions in many relevant parameter ranges. Moreover, it matches the lower bound from Gopi et al. (2020) in an interesting range of parameters where $r=Theta(sqrt{n})$, $r-a=Theta(sqrt{n})$ and $h$ is a fixed constant with $hle a+2$, achieving the optimal field size of $Theta_{h}(n^{h/2}).$ Our construction is based on the theory of skew polynomials. We believe skew polynomials should have further applications in coding and complexity theory; as a small illustration we show how to capture algebraic results underlying list decoding folded Reed-Solomon and multiplicity codes in a unified way within this theory.