The functor of toric varieties associated with Weyl chambers and Losev-Manin moduli spaces

Abstract

A root system $R$ of rank $n$ defines an $n$-dimensional smooth projective toric variety $X(R)$ associated with its fan of Weyl chambers. We give a simple description of the functor of $X(R)$ in terms of the root system $R$ and apply this result in the case of root systems of type $A$ to give a new proof of the fact that the toric variety $X(A_n)$ is the fine moduli space $\overline{L}_{n+1}$ of stable $(n+1)$-pointed chains of projective lines investigated by Losev and Manin.