Algebraic and enumerative combinatorics seminar - Mahrud Sayrafi- Constructing exceptional collections for toric varieties

Thursday, January 15, 2026 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm EST (GMT -05:00)
Speaker: Mahrud Sayrafi
Affiliation: McMaster University
Location: MC 5417

Abstract:  Exceptional collections are a powerful tool for understanding the derived category of coherent sheaves on algebraic varieties, with applications in commutative algebra, birational geometry, and mirror symmetry. While the existence of exceptional collections is known for classical varieties such as Grassmannians and flag varieties, constructing explicit collections for toric varieties presents challenges in combinatorial algebraic geometry. In this talk I will describe a computational approach to constructing full strong exceptional collections consisting of complexes of line bundles for toric varieties. No background in derived categories is assumed.

There will be a pre-seminar presenting relevant background at the beginning graduate level starting at 1:30pm.