Irreducibility of toric complete intersections

Abstract

We develop an approach to study the irreducibility of generic complete intersections in the algebraic torus defined by equations with fixed monomials and fixed linear relations on coefficients. Using our approach we generalize the irreducibility theorems of Khovanskii to fields of arbitrary characteristic. Also we get a combinatorial sufficient conditions for irreducibility of engineered complete intersections. As an application we give a combinatorial condition of irreducibility for some critical loci and Thom-Bordmann strata: $f = f'_x = 0$, $f'_x = f'_y = 0$, $f = f'_x = f'_{xx} = 0$, etc.