We investigate, using purely combinatorial methods, structural and algorithmic properties of linear equivalence classes of divisors on tropical curves. In particular, an elementary proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem for tropical curves, similar to the recent proof of the Riemann-Roch theorem for graphs by Baker and Norine, is presented. In addition, a conjecture of Baker asserting that the rank of a divisor D on a (non-metric) graph is equal to the rank of D on the corresponding metric graph is confirmed, and an algorithm for computing the rank of a divisor on a tropical curve is constructed.
Given a divisor $D$ on a tropical curve $Γ$, we show that reduced divisors define an integral affine map from the tropical curve to the complete linear system $|D|$. This is done by providing an explicit description of the behavior of reduced divisors under infinitesimal modifications of the base point. We consider the cases where the reduced-divisor map defines an embedding of the curve into the linear system, and in this way, classify all the tropical curves with a very ample canonical divisor. As an application of the reduced-divisor map, we show the existence of Weierstrass points on tropi…
We study the tropicalization of intersections of plane curves, under the assumption that they have the same tropicalization. We show that the set of tropical divisors that arise in this manner is a pure dimensional balanced polyhedral complex and compute its dimension. When the genus is at most 1, we show that all the tropical divisors that move in the expected dimension are realizable. As part of the proof, we introduce a combinatorial tool for explicitly constructing large families of realizable tropical divisors.
We introduce and study polystable divisors on a tropical curve, which are the tropical analogue of polystable torsion-free rank-1 sheaves on a nodal curve. We construct a universal tropical Jacobian over the moduli space of tropical curves of genus $g$. This space parametrizes equivalence classes of tropical curves of genus $g$ together with a $μ$-polystable divisor, and can be seen as a tropical counterpart of Caporaso universal Picard scheme. We describe polyhedral decompositions of the Jacobian of a tropical curve via polystable divisors, relating them with other known polyhedral decomposit…
In his preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.3813, Cartwright introduced the notion of a weak tropical complex in order to generalize the concepts of divisors and the Picard group on graphs from Baker and Norine's paper Riemann-Roch and Abel-Jacobi Theory on a Finite Graph. A tropical complex $Γ$ is a $Δ$-complex equipped with certain algebraic data. Divisors in a tropical complex are formal linear combinations of ridges, and piecewise-linear functions on a tropical complex give rise in a natural way to divisors. Divisors that arise from PL-functions are called principal, and divisors that are l…
We investigate a canonical extension of a conventional combinatorial notion of reduced divisors to a notion of tropical projections, which can be defined as the unique minimizers of the so-called $B$-pseudonorms with respect to compact tropical convex sets. In this paper, we build the foundation of a theory of idempotent analysis using tropical projections and obtain a series of subsequent results, e.g. tropical retracts, construction of compact tropical convex sets and a set-theoretical characterization of tropical weak independence. In particular, we prove a tropical version of Mazur's Theor…
We consider a variant of metrised graphs where the edge lengths take values in a commutative monoid, as a higher-rank generalisation of the notion of a tropical curve. Divisorial gonality, which Baker and Norine defined on combinatorial graphs in terms of a chip firing game, is extended to these monoid-metrised graphs. We define geometric gonality of a monoid-metrised graph as the minimal degree of a horizontally conformal, non-degenerate morphism onto an monoid-metrised tree, and prove that geometric gonality is an upper bound for divisorial gonality in the monoid-metrised case. We also show …
By tropical Abel-Jacobi theorem, the Jacobian of a tropical curve is isomorphic to the Picard group. A tropical curve in $\mathbb{R}^2$ corresponds to an immersion from a tropical curve to $\mathbb{R}^2$. In this paper, we show that any principal divisor on a tropical curve is the restriction of a principal divisor on the ambient plane $\mathbb{R}^2$.
We construct a space classifying divisor classes of a fixed degree on all tropical curves of a fixed combinatorial type and show that the function taking a divisor class to its rank is upper semicontinuous. We extend the definition of the Brill-Noether rank of a metric graph to tropical curves and use the upper semicontinuity of the rank function on divisors to show that the Brill-Noether rank varies upper semicontinuously in families of tropical curves. Furthermore, we present a specialization lemma relating the Brill-Noether rank of a tropical curve with the dimension of the Brill-Noether lo…
Associated to any divisor in the Chow ring of a simplicial tropical fan, we construct a family of polytopal complexes, called normal complexes, which we propose as an analogue of the well-studied notion of normal polytopes from the setting of complete fans. We describe certain closed convex polyhedral cones of divisors for which the "volume" of each divisor in the cone - that is, the degree of its top power - is equal to the volume of the associated normal complexes. For the Bergman fan of any matroid with building set, we prove that there exists an open family of such cones of divisors with n…
Tropical Weierstrass points and Weierstrass weights
CNRS - Laboratoire de Mathématiques d’Orsay, Université Paris-Saclay（法国国家科学研究中心-奥赛数学实验室，巴黎萨克雷大学）；Institut de mathématiques de Marseille, Université d’Aix-Marseille, CNRS, Centrale Marseille（马赛数学研究所，艾克斯-马赛大学，法国国家科学研究中心，中央马赛）；Department of Mathematics, University of Washington — Mathematics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences（华盛顿大学数学系，国家理论科学中心）
Using a potential theory on metric graphs "Gamma", we introduce the notion of tropical convexity to the space "RDiv^d(Gamma)" of effective R-divisors of degree d on "Gamma" and show that a natural metric can be defined on "RDiv^d(Gamma)". In addition, we extend the notion of reduced divisors which is conventionally defined in a complete linear system |D| with respect to a single point in "Gamma". In our general setting, a reduced divisor is defined uniquely as an R-divisor in a compact tropical convex subset "T" of "RDiv^d(Gamma)" with respect to a certain R-divisor "E" of the same degree d. I…
Brodsky, Joswig, Morrison and Sturmfels showed that not all abstract tropical curves of genus $3$ can be realized as a tropicalization of a quartic in the euclidean plane. In this article, we focus on the interior of the maximal cones in the moduli space and classify all curves which can be realized as a faithful tropicalization in a tropical plane. Reflecting the algebro-geometric world, we show that these are exactly those which are not realizably hyperelliptic. Our approach is constructive: For any not realizably hyperelliptic curve, we explicitly construct a realizable model of the tropica…
Let $Γ$ be a compact tropical curve (or metric graph) of genus $g$. Using the theory of tropical theta functions, Mikhalkin and Zharkov proved that there is a canonical effective representative (called a break divisor) for each linear equivalence class of divisors of degree $g$ on $Γ$. We present a new combinatorial proof of the fact that there is a unique break divisor in each equivalence class, establishing in the process an "integral" version of this result which is of independent interest. As an application, we provide a "geometric proof" of (a dual version of) Kirchhoff's celebrated Matri…
A tropical curve Γis a metric graph with possibly unbounded edges, and tropical rational functions are continuous piecewise linear functions with integer slopes. We define the complete linear system |D| of a divisor D on a tropical curve Γanalogously to the classical counterpart. We investigate the structure of |D| as a cell complex and show that linear systems are quotients of tropical modules, finitely generated by vertices of the cell complex. Using a finite set of generators, |D| defines a map from Γto a tropical projective space, and the image can be extended to a tropical curve of degree…
In the first part of this paper, we discuss the notion of irreducibility of cycles in the moduli spaces of n-marked rational tropical curves. We prove that Psi-classes and vital divisors are irreducible, and that locally irreducible divisors are also globally irreducible for n \leq 6. In the second part of the paper, we show that the locus of point configurations in (\R^2)^n in special position for counting rational plane curves (defined in two different ways) can be given the structure a tropical cycle of codimension 1. In addition, we compute explicitly the weights of this cycle.
We define a divisor theory for graphs and tropical curves endowed with a weight function on the vertices; we prove that the Riemann-Roch theorem holds in both cases. We extend Baker's Specialization Lemma to weighted graphs.
This paper proves the $r \times r$ minors of an $n \times n$ symmetric matrix of indeterminates are a tropical basis when $r = 2$, $r = 3$, or $r = n$, and are not when $4 < r < n$ or $r = 4, n > 12$. In the process, it introduces two new notions of rank for symmetric matrices coming from tropical geometry, the symmetric tropical and the symmetric Kapranov rank, which are the symmetric versions of their standard counterparts defined by Develin, Santos, and Sturmfels.
Given a curve defined over an algebraically closed field which is complete with respect to a nontrivial valuation, we study its tropical Jacobian. This is done by first tropicalizing the curve, and then computing the Jacobian of the resulting weighted metric graph. In general, it is not known how to find the abstract tropicalization of a curve defined by polynomial equations, since an embedded tropicalization may not be faithful, and there is no known algorithm for carrying out semistable reduction in practice. We solve this problem in the case of hyperelliptic curves by studying admissible co…
For a projective curve $C$ and the canonical divisor $K_C$ on $C$, it is classically known that the canonical ring $R(C) = \oplus_{m=0}^\infty H^0(C, m K_C)$ is finitely generated in degree at most three. In this article, we study whether analogous statements hold for finite graphs and tropical curves. For any finite graph $G$, we show that the canonical semi-ring $R(G)$ is finitely generated but that the degree of generators are not bounded by a universal constant. For any hyperelliptic tropical curve $Γ$ with integer edge-length, we show that the canonical semi-ring $R(Γ)$ is not finitely ge…
We initiate the study of positive-tropical generators as positive analogues of the concept of tropical bases. Applying this to the tropicalization of determinantal varieties, we develop criteria for characterizing their positive part. We focus on the study of low-rank matrices, in particular matrices of rank 2 and 3. Moreover, in the case square-matrices of corank 1, we fully classify the signed tropicalization of the determinantal variety, even beyond the positive part.
We introduce the notion of semibreak divisors on metric graphs (tropical curves) and prove that every effective divisor class (of degree at most the genus) has a semibreak divisor representative. This appropriately generalizes the notion of break divisors (in degree equal to genus). Our method of proof is new, even for the special case of break divisors. We provide an algorithm to efficiently compute such semibreak representatives. Semibreak divisors provide the tool to establish some basic properties of effective loci inside Picard groups of metric graphs. We prove that effective loci are pur…
We continue to study the rank functions of tropical matrices. In this paper, we explain how to reduce the computation of ranks for matrices over the `supertropical semifield' to the standard tropical case. Using a counting approach, we prove the existence of a $01$-matrix with many ones and without large all-one submatrices, and we put our results together and construct an $n\times n$ matrix with tropical rank $o(n^{0.5+\varepsilon})$ and Kapranov rank $n-o(n)$.
We provide an example of a 6-by-6 matrix with tropical rank equal to 4 and Kapranov rank equal to 5. This answers a question asked by M. Chan, A. Jensen, and E. Rubei.
Under a certain condition A we give a construction to calculate the intersection cohomology of a rank one local system on the complement to a hyperplane-like divisor
We prove a version of Clifford's theorem for metrized complexes. Namely, a metrized complex that carries a divisor of degree $2r$ and rank $r$ (for $0<r<g-1$) also carries a divisor of degree $2$ and rank $1$. We provide a structure theorem for hyperelliptic metrized complexes, and use it to classify divisors of degree bounded by the genus. We discuss a tropical version of Martens' theorem for metric graphs.
We introduce and study three different notions of tropical rank for symmetric and dissimilarity matrices in terms of minimal decompositions into rank 1 symmetric matrices, star tree matrices, and tree matrices. Our results provide a close study of the tropical secant sets of certain nice tropical varieties, including the tropical Grassmannian. In particular, we determine the dimension of each secant set, the convex hull of the variety, and in most cases, the smallest secant set which is equal to the convex hull.
In this note, we generalize the technique developed in [13] and prove that every 5xn matrix of tropical rank at most 3 has Kapranov rank at most 3, for the ground field that contains at least 4 elements. For the ground field either F_2 or F_3, we construct an example of a 5x5 matrix with tropical rank 3 and Kapranov rank 4.
Given integers $g \geq 0$, $n \geq 1$, and a vector $w \in (\mathbb{Q} \cap (0, 1])^n$ such that ${2g - 2 + \sum w_i > 0}$, we study the topology of the moduli space $Δ_{g, w}$ of $w$-stable tropical curves of genus $g$ with volume 1. The space $Δ_{g, w}$ is the dual complex of the divisor of singular curves in Hassett's moduli space of $w$-stable genus $g$ curves $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g, w}$. When $g \geq 1$, we show that $Δ_{g, w}$ is simply connected for all values of $w$. We also give a formula for the Euler characteristic of $Δ_{g, w}$ in terms of the combinatorics of $w$.
We investigate the tree gonality of a genus-$g$ metric graph, defined as the minimum degree of a tropical morphism from any tropical modification of the metric graph to a metric tree. We give a combinatorial constructive proof that this number is at most $\lceil g/2 \rceil + 1$, a fact whose proofs so far required an algebro-geometric detour via special divisors on curves. For even genus, the tropical morphism which realizes the bound belongs to a family of tropical morphisms that is pure of dimension $3g-3$ and that has a generically finite-to-one map onto the moduli space of genus-$g$ metric…
We study the algebraic rank of a divisor on a graph, an invariant defined using divisors on algebraic curves dual to the graph. We prove it satisfies the Riemann-Roch formula, a specialization property, and the Clifford inequality. We prove that it is at most equal to the (usual) combinatorial rank, and that equality holds in many cases, though not in general.
The divisor theory for graphs is compared to the theory of linear series on curves through the correspondence associating a curve to its dual graph. An algebro-geometric interpretation of the combinatorial rank is proposed, and proved in some cases.
We prove the conjecture that, for any $n$, the monoid of all $n \times n$ tropical matrices satisfies nontrivial semigroup identities. To this end, we prove that the factor rank of a large enough power of a tropical matrix does not exceed the tropical rank of the original matrix.
We compute the space of 5x5 matrices of tropical rank at most 3 and show that it coincides with the space of 5x5 matrices of Kapranov rank at most 3, that is, the space of five labeled coplanar points in TP4. We then prove that the Kapranov rank of every 5xn matrix equals its tropical rank; equivalently, that the 4x4 minors of a 5xn matrix of variables form a tropical basis. This answers a question asked by Develin, Santos, and Sturmfels.
Matrix factorization problems over various semirings naturally arise in different contexts of modern pure and applied mathematics. These problems are very hard in general and cause computational difficulties in applications. We give a survey of what is known on the algorithmic complexity of Boolean, fuzzy, tropical, nonnegative, and positive semidefinite factorizations, and we examine the behavior of the corresponding rank functions on matrices of bounded bandwidth. We show that the Boolean, fuzzy, and tropical versions of matrix factorization become polynomial time solvable when restricted to…
A tropical matrix is a matrix defined over the max-plus semiring. For such matrices, there exist several non-coinciding notions of rank: the row rank, the column rank, the Schein/Barvinok rank, the Kapranov rank, or the tropical rank, among others. In the present paper, we show that there exists a natural notion of ultimate rank for the powers of a tropical matrix, which does not depend on the underlying notion of rank. Furthermore, we provide a simple formula for the ultimate rank of a matrix which can therefore be computed in polynomial time. Then we turn our attention to finitely generated …
The space T_{d,n} of n tropically collinear points in a fixed tropical projective space TP^{d-1} is equivalent to the tropicalization of the determinantal variety of matrices of rank at most 2, which consists of real d x n matrices of tropical or Kapranov rank at most 2, modulo projective equivalence of columns. We show that it is equal to the image of the moduli space M_{0,n}(TP^{d-1},1) of n-marked tropical lines in TP^{d-1} under the evaluation map. Thus we derive a natural simplicial fan structure for T_{d,n} using a simplicial fan structure of M_{0,n}(TP^{d-1},1) which coincides with that…
We compute the automorphism group $\mathrm{Aut}(Δ_{g, n})$ for all $g, n \geq 0$ such that $3g - 3 + n > 0$, where $Δ_{g, n} \subset M_{g, n}^\mathrm{trop}$ is the moduli space of stable $n$-marked tropical curves of genus $g$ and volume one. In particular, we show that $\mathrm{Aut}(Δ_{g})$ is trivial for $g \geq 2$, while $\mathrm{Aut}(Δ_{g, n}) \cong S_n$ when $n \geq 1$ and $(g, n) \neq (0, 4), (1, 2)$. The space $Δ_{g, n}$ is a symmetric $Δ$-complex in the sense of Chan, Galatius, and Payne, and is identified with the dual intersection complex of the boundary divisor in the Deligne-Mumfor…
The aim of this paper is to introduce a certain number of tools and results suitable for the study of valuations of higher rank on function fields of algebraic varieties. This will be based on a study of higher rank quasi-monomial valuations taking values in the lexicographically ordered group R^k. We prove a duality theorem that gives a geometric realization of higher rank quasi-monomial valuations as tangent cones of dual cone complexes. Using this duality, we provide an analytic description of quasi-monomial valuations as multi-directional derivative operators on tropical functions. We cons…
A metric graph is a geometric realization of a finite graph by identifying each edge with a real interval. A divisor on a metric graph $Γ$ is an element of the free abelian group on $Γ$. The rank of a divisor on a metric graph is a concept appearing in the Riemann-Roch theorem for metric graphs (or tropical curves) due to Gathmann and Kerber, and Mikhalkin and Zharkov. We define a \emph{rank-determining set} of a metric graph $Γ$ to be a subset $A$ of $Γ$ such that the rank of a divisor $D$ on $Γ$ is always equal to the rank of $D$ restricted on $A$. We show constructively in this paper that t…
