This article contains a detailed study, in the toric case, of the test configuration geodesic rays defined by Phong-Sturm. We show that the `Bergman approximations' of Phong-Sturm converge in C^1 to the geodesic ray and that the geodesic ray itself is C^{ 1,1} and no better. The \kahler metrics associated to the geodesic ray of potentials are discontinuous across certain hypersurfaces and are degenerate on certain open sets. A novelty in the analysis is the connection between Bergman metrics, Bergman kernels and the theory of large deviations.
Categories: math.DG math.CV