Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2018
The space of n distinct points and adisjoint parametrized hyperplane in projective d-space up to projectivity – equivalently, configurations of n distinct points in affine d-space up to translation and homothety – has a beautiful compactification introduced by Chen, Gibney and Krashen. This variety, constructed inductively using the apparatus of Fulton–MacPherson configuration spaces, is a parameter space of certain pointed rational varieties whose dual intersection complex is a rooted tree. This generalizes $\overline M _{0,n}$ and shares many properties with it. In this paper, we prove that the normalization of the Chow quotient of (ℙd)n by the diagonal action of the subgroup of projectivities fixing a hyperplane, pointwise, is isomorphic to this Chen–Gibney–Krashen space Td, n. This is a non-reductive analogue of Kapranov's famous quotient construction of $\overline M _{0,n}$, and indeed as a special case we show that $\overline M _{0,n}$ is the Chow quotient of (ℙ1)n−1 by an action of 𝔾m ⋊ 𝔾a.