Vector bundles on toric varieties

Following Sam Payne's work, we study the existence problem of nontrivial vector bundles on toric varieties. The first result we prove is that every complete fan admits a nontrivial conewise linear multivalued function. Such functions could potentially be the Chern classes of toric vector bundles. Then we use the results of Cortinas, Haesemeyer, Walker and Weibel to show that the (non-equivariant) Grothendieck group of the toric 3-fold studied by Payne is large, so the variety has a nontrivial vector bundle. Using the same computation, we show that every toric 3-fold X either has a nontrivial line bundle, or there is a finite surjective toric morphism from Y to X, such that Y has a large Grothendieck group. (C) 2012 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.