Polyhedral divisors and SL₂-actions on affine T-varieties

In this paper we classify SL_2-actions on normal affine T-varieties that are normalized by the torus T. This is done in terms of a combinatorial description of T-varieties given by Altmann and Hausen. The main ingredient is a generalization of Demazure's roots of the fan of a toric variety. As an application we give a description of special SL_2-actions on normal affine varieties. We also obtain, in our terms, the classification of quasihomogeneous SL_2-threefolds due to Popov.