On the Hodge Structure of Projective Hypersurfaces in Toric Varieties

This paper generalizes classical results of Griffiths, Dolgachev and Steenbrink on the cohomology of hypersurfaces in weighted projective spaces. Given a $d$-dimensional projective simplicial toric variety $P$ and an ample hypersurface $X$ defined by an polynomial $f$ in the homogeneous coordinate ring $S$ of $P$ (as defined in an earlier paper of the first author), we show that the graded pieces of the Hodge filtration on $H^d(P - X)$ are naturally isomorphic to certain graded pieces of $S/J(f)$, where $J(f)$ is the Jacobian ideal of $f$. We then discuss how this relates to the primitive cohomology of $X$. Also, if $T$ is the torus contained in $X$, then the intersection of $X$ and $T$ is an affine hypersurface in $T$, and we show how recent results of the second author can be stated using various ideals in the ring $S$. To prove our results, we must give a careful description (in terms of $S$) of $d$-forms and $(d-1)$-forms on the toric variety $P$. For completeness, we also provide a proof of the Bott-Steenbrink-Danilov vanishing theorem for simplicial toric varieties. Other topics considered in the paper include quasi-smooth hypersurfaces and $V$-submanifolds, the structure of the complement of $U$ when $P$ is represented as the quotient of an open subset $U$ of affine space, a generalization of the Euler exact sequence on projective space, and the relation between graded pieces of $R/J(f)$ and the moduli of ample hypersurfaces in $P$.