Smoothing Calabi–Yau toric hypersurfaces using the Gross–Siebert algorithm
We explain how to form a novel dataset of Calabi–Yau threefolds via the Gross–Siebert algorithm. We expect these to degenerate to Calabi–Yau toric hypersurfaces with certain Gorenstein (not necessarily isolated) singularities. In particular, we explain how to ‘smooth the boundary’ of a class of four-dimensional reflexive polytopes to obtain polarised tropical manifolds. We compute topological invariants of a compactified torus fibration over each such tropical manifold, expected to be homeomorphic to the general fibre of the Gross–Siebert smoothing. We consider a family of examples related to products of reflexive polygons. Among these we find $14$ topological types with $b_2=1$ that do not appear in existing lists of known rank-one Calabi–Yau threefolds.