Convex bodies and algebraic equations on affine varieties

Kiumars Kaveh, Askold G. Khovanskii

Published 2008-04-25Version 1

Given an affine variety X and a finite dimensional vector space of regular functions L on X, we associate a convex body to (X, L) such that its volume is responsible for the number of solutions of a generic system of functions from L. This is a far reaching generalization of usual theory of Newton polytopes (which is concerned with toric varieties). As applications we give new, simple and transparent proofs of some well-known theorems in both algebraic geometry (e.g. Hodge Index Theorem) and convex geometry (e.g. Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality). Our main tools are classical Hilbert theory on degree of subvarieties of a projective space (in algebraic geometry) and Brunn-Minkowski inequality (in convex geometric).