Mirror Symmetry via Logarithmic Degeneration Data I

Abstract

This paper is the first arising from our project announced in math.AG/0211094, "Affine manifolds, log structures, and mirror symmetry." We aim to study mirror symmetry by studying the log structures of Illusie-Fontaine and Kato on degenerations of Calabi-Yau manifolds. The basic idea is that one can associate to certain sorts of degenerations of Calabi-Yau manifolds a log Calabi-Yau space, which is a log structure on the degenerate fibre. Then many statements about mirror symmetry which one hopes to be true for the general fibre should first be proved for this log CY space. In this paper we begin by discussing affine manifolds with singularities. Given such an affine manifold along with a polyhedral decomposition, we show how to construct a scheme consisting of a union of toric varieties. In certain non-degenerate cases, we can also construct log structures on these schemes. Conversely, given certain sorts of degenerations, one can build an affine manifold with singularities structure on the dual intersection complex of the degeneration. Mirror symmetry is then obtained as a discrete Legendre transform on these affine manifolds, thus providing an algebro-geometrization of the Strominger-Yau-Zaslow conjecture. The deepest result of this paper shows an isomorphism between log complex moduli of a log CY space and log Kahler moduli of its mirror.