Gross, Hacking, Siebert — Theta Functions On Varieties With Effective Anti-Canonical Class (2019)

We show that a large class of maximally degenerating families of n-dimensional polarized varieties come with a canonical basis of sections of powers of the ample line bundle. The families considered are obtained by smoothing a reducible union of toric varieties governed by a wall structure on a real n-(pseudo-)manifold. Wall structures have previously been constructed inductively for cases with locally rigid singularities and by Gromov-Witten theory for mirrors of log Calabi-Yau surfaces and K3 surfaces by various combinations of the authors. For trivial wall structures on the n-torus we retrieve the classical theta functions. Possible applications include mirror symmetry, geometric compactifications of moduli of certain polarized varieties via stable pairs and geometric quantization.