Finding the so-called characteristic numbers of the complex projective plane ${\mathbb C}P^2$ is a classical problem of enumerative geometry posed by Zeuthen more than a century ago. For a given $d$ and $g$ one has to find the number of degree $d$ genus $g$ curves that pass through a certain generic configuration of points and at the same time are tangent to a certain generic configuration of lines. The total number of points and lines in these two configurations is $3d-1+g$ so that the answer is a finite integer number.
In this paper we translate this classical problem to the corresponding enumerative problem of tropical geometry in the case when $g=0$. Namely, we show that the tropical problem is well-posed and establish a special case of the correspondence theorem that ensures that the corresponding tropical and classical numbers coincide. Then we use the floor diagram calculus to reduce the problem to pure combinatorics. As a consequence, we express genus 0 characteristic numbers of $\CC P^2$ in terms of open Hurwitz numbers.
We exploit three classical characterizations of smooth genus two curves to study their tropical and analytic counterparts. First, we provide a combinatorial rule to determine the dual graph of each algebraic curve and the metric structure on the associated minimal Berkovich skeleton. Our main tool is the description of genus two curves via hyperelliptic covers of P^1 with six branch points. Given the valuations of these six points and their differences, our algorithm provides an explicit harmonic 2-to-1 map to a metric tree on six leaves. Second, we use tropical modifications to produce a fait…
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 $g_1, ..., g_k$ be tropical polynomials in $n$ variables with Newton polytopes $P_1, ..., P_k$. We study combinatorial questions on the intersection of the tropical hypersurfaces defined by $g_1, ..., g_k$, such as the $f$-vector, the number of unbounded faces and (in case of a curve) the genus. Our point of departure is Vigeland's work who considered the special case $k=n-1$ and where all Newton polytopes are standard simplices. We generalize these results to arbitrary $k$ and arbitrary Newton polytopes $P_1, ..., P_k$. This provides new formulas for the number of faces and the genus in t…
We introduce a tropical geometric framework that allows us to define $ψ$ classes for moduli spaces of tropical curves of arbitrary genus. We prove correspondence theorems between algebraic and tropical $ψ$ classes for some one-dimensional families of genus-one tropical curves.
We study the maximal values of Betti numbers of tropical subvarieties of a given dimension and degree in $\mathbb{TP}^n$. We provide a lower estimate for the maximal value of the top Betti number, which naturally depends on the dimension and degree, but also on the codimension. In particular, when the codimension is large enough, this lower estimate is larger than the maximal value of the corresponding Hodge number of complex algebraic projective varieties of the given dimension and degree. In the case of surfaces, we extend our study to all tropical homology groups. As a special case, we prov…
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 develop a method for describing the tropical complete intersection of a tropical hypersurface and a tropical plane in $\mathbb{R}^3$. This involves a method for determining the topological type of the intersection of a tropical plane curve and $\mathbb{R}_{\leq 0}^2$ by using a polyhedral complex. As an application, we study smooth tropical complete intersection curves of genus $3$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$. In particular, we show that there are no smooth tropical complete intersection curves in $\mathbb{R}^3$ whose skeletons are the lollipop graph of genus $3$. This gives a partial answer to a pro…
We study the locus of tropical hyperelliptic curves inside the moduli space of tropical curves of genus g. We define a harmonic morphism of metric graphs and prove that a metric graph is hyperelliptic if and only if it admits a harmonic morphism of degree 2 to a metric tree. This generalizes the work of Baker and Norine on combinatorial graphs to the metric case. We then prove that the locus of 2-edge-connected genus g tropical hyperelliptic curves is a (2g-1)-dimensional stacky polyhedral fan whose maximal cells are in bijection with trees on g-1 vertices with maximum valence 3. Finally, we s…
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 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…
Tropical geometry is a relatively recent field in mathematics created as a simplified model for certain problems in algebraic geometry. We introduce the definition of abstract and planar tropical curves as well as their properties, including combinatorial type and degree. We also talk about the moduli space, a geometric object that parameterizes all possible types of abstract or planar tropical curves subject to certain conditions. Our research focuses on the moduli spaces of planar tropical curves of genus one, arbitrary degree d and any number of marked, unbounded edges. We prove that these …
Several results in tropical geometry have related the j-invariant of an algebraic plane curve of genus one to the cycle length of a tropical curve of genus one. In this paper, we prove that for a plane cubic over the field of Puiseux series the negative of the generic valuation of the $j$-invariant is equal to the cycle length of the tropicalization of the curve, if there is a cycle at all.
We tropicalize the rational map that takes triples of points in the projective plane to the plane of quadrics passing through these points. The image of its tropicalization is contained in the tropicalization of its image. We identify these objects inside the tropical Grassmannian of planes in projective 5-space, and we explore a small tropical Hilbert scheme.
In tropical geometry, given a curve in a toric variety, one defines a corresponding graph embedded in Euclidean space. We study the problem of reversing this process for curves of genus zero and one. Our methods focus on describing curves by parameterizations, not by their defining equations; we give parameterizations by rational functions in the genus zero case and by non-archimedean elliptic functions in the genus one case. For genus zero curves, those graphs which can be lifted can be characterized in a completely combinatorial manner. For genus one curves, show that certain conditions iden…
This paper is a combinatorial and computational study of the moduli space of tropical curves of genus g, the moduli space of principally polarized tropical abelian varieties, and the tropical Torelli map. These objects were introduced recently by Brannetti, Melo, and Viviani. Here, we give a new definition of the category of stacky fans, of which the aforementioned moduli spaces are objects and the Torelli map is a morphism. We compute the poset of cells of tropical M_g and of the tropical Schottky locus for genus at most 5. We show that tropical A_g is Hausdorff, and we also construct a finit…
We study a tropical analogue of the projective dual variety of a hypersurface. When $X$ is a curve in $\mathbb{P}^2$ or a surface in $\mathbb{P}^3$, we provide an explicit description of $\text{Trop}(X^*)$ in terms of $\text{Trop}(X)$, as long as $\text{Trop}(X)$ is smooth and satisfies a mild genericity condition. As a consequence, when $X$ is a curve we describe the transformation of Newton polygons under projective duality, and recover classical formulas for the degree of a dual plane curve. For higher dimensional hypersurfaces $X$, we give a partial description of $\text{Trop}(X^*)$.
Any smooth tropical plane curve contains a distinguished trivalent graph called its skeleton. In 2020 Morrison and Tewari proved that the so-called big face graphs cannot be the skeleta of tropical curves for genus $12$ and greater. In this paper we answer an open question they posed to extend their result to the prism graphs, proving that they are the skeleton of a smooth tropical plane curve precisely when the genus is at most $11$. Our main tool is a classification of lattice polygons with two points than can simultaneously view all others, without having any one point that can observe all …
We use tropical and nonarchimedean geometry to study the moduli space of genus $0$ stable maps to $\mathbb{P}^1$ relative to two points. This space is exhibited as a tropical compactification in a toric variety. Moreover, the fan of this toric variety may be interpreted as a moduli space for tropical relative stable maps with the same discrete data. As a consequence, we confirm an expectation of Bertram and the first two authors, that the tropical Hurwitz cycles are tropicalizations of classical Hurwitz cycles. As a second application, we obtain a full descendant correspondence for genus $0$ r…
A tropical complete intersection curve C in R^(n+1) is a transversal intersection of n smooth tropical hypersurfaces. We give a formula for the number of vertices of C given by the degrees of the tropical hypersurfaces. We also compute the genus of C (defined as the number of independent cycles of C) when C is smooth and connected.
For each universal genus-$g$ polarization $μ$ of degree $d$, we construct a universal tropical Jacobian $J_{μ,g}^{trop}$ as a generalized cone complex over the moduli space of stable pointed genus-$g$ tropical curves. We show several properties of the space $J_{μ,g}^{trop}$. In particular, we prove that the natural compactification of $J_{μ,g}^{trop}$ is the tropicalization of the Esteves' compactified universal Jacobian over the moduli space of stable pointed genus-$g$ curves.
We enumerate complex curves on toric surfaces of any given degree and genus, having a single cusp and nodes as their singularities, and matching appropriately many point constraints. The solution is obtained via tropical enumerative geometry. The same technique applies to enumeration of real plane cuspidal curves: We show that, for any fixed $r\ge1$ and $d\ge2r+3$, there exists a generic real $2r$-dimensional linear family of plane curves of degree $d$ in which the number of real $r$-cuspidal curves is asymptotically comparable with the total number of complex $r$-cuspidal curves in the family…
We study tropically planar graphs, which are the graphs that appear in smooth tropical plane curves. We develop necessary conditions for graphs to be tropically planar, and compute the number of tropically planar graphs up to genus $7$. We provide non-trivial upper and lower bounds on the number of tropically planar graphs, and prove that asymptotically $0\%$ of connected trivalent planar graphs are tropically planar.
We prove the following "linkage" theorem: two p-regular graphs of the same genus can be obtained from one another by a finite alternating sequence of one-edge-contractions; moreover this preserves 3-edge-connectivity. We use the linkage theorem to prove that various moduli spaces of tropical curves are connected through codimension one.
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.
Given a projective variety $X$ of codimension $k+1$ in $\mathbb{P}^n$ the Chow hypersurface $Z_X$ is the hypersurface of the Grassmannian $\operatorname{Gr}(k, n)$ parametrizing projective linear spaces that intersect $X$. We introduce the tropical Chow hypersurface $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$. This object only depends on the tropical variety $\operatorname{Trop}(X)$ and we provide an explicit way to obtain $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$ from $\operatorname{Trop}(X)$. We also give a geometric description of $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$. We conjecture that, as in the classical case, $\operatorname{Tro…
Hurwitz numbers count genus g, degree d covers of the projective line with fixed branch locus. This equals the degree of a natural branch map defined on the Hurwitz space. In tropical geometry, algebraic curves are replaced by certain piece-wise linear objects called tropical curves. This paper develops a tropical counterpart of the branch map and shows that its degree recovers classical Hurwitz numbers.
We introduce the notion of a tropical coamoeba which gives a combinatorial description of the Fukaya category of the mirror of a toric Fano stack. We show that the polyhedral decomposition of a real n-torus into (n + 1) permutohedra gives a tropical coamoeba for the mirror of the projective space, and prove a torus-equivariant version of homological mirror symmetry for the projective space. As a corollary, we obtain homological mirror symmetry for toric orbifolds of the projective space.
We study the moduli space of metric graphs that arise from tropical plane curves. There are far fewer such graphs than tropicalizations of classical plane curves. For fixed genus $g$, our moduli space is a stacky fan whose cones are indexed by regular unimodular triangulations of Newton polygons with $g$ interior lattice points. It has dimension $2g+1$ unless $g \leq 3$ or $g = 7$. We compute these spaces explicitly for $g \leq 5$.
Using degeneration techniques, we prove the correspondence of tropical curve counts and log Gromov-Witten invariants with general incidence and psi-class conditions in toric varieties for genus zero curves and all non-superabundant higher-genus situations. We also relate the log invariants to the ordinary ones, in particular explaining the appearance of negative multiplicities in the descendant correspondence result of Mark Gross.
The first secant variety of a projective monomial curve is a threefold with an action by a one-dimensional torus. Its tropicalization is a three-dimensional fan with a one-dimensional lineality space, so the tropical threefold is represented by a balanced graph. Our main result is an explicit construction of that graph. As a consequence, we obtain algorithms to effectively compute the multidegree and Chow polytope of an arbitrary projective monomial curve. This generalizes an earlier degree formula due to Ranestad. The combinatorics underlying our construction is rather delicate, and it is bas…
We propose a geometric interpretation of Block and Göttsche's refined tropical curve counting invariants in terms of virtual $χ_{-y}$-specializations of motivic measures of semialgebraic sets in relative Hilbert schemes. We prove that this interpretation is correct for linear series of genus 1, and in arbitrary genus after specializing from $χ_{-y}$ to Euler characteristic.
The moduli space $M_g^{trop}$ of tropical curves of genus $g$ is a generalized cone complex that parametrizes metric vertex-weighted graphs of genus $g$. For each such graph $Γ$, the associated canonical linear system $\vert K_Γ\vert$ has the structure of a polyhedral complex. In this article we propose a tropical analogue of the Hodge bundle on $M_g^{trop}$ and study its basic combinatorial properties. Our construction is illustrated with explicit computations and examples.
In this paper we prove that the cohomology of smooth projective tropical varieties verify the tropical analogs of three fundamental theorems which govern the cohomology of complex projective varieties: Hard Lefschetz theorem, Hodge-Riemann relations and monodromy-weight conjecture. On the way to establish these results, we introduce and prove other results of independent interest. This includes a generalization of the results of Adiprasito-Huh-Katz, Hodge theory for combinatorial geometries, to any unimodular quasi-projective fan having the same support as the Bergman fan of a matroid, a tropi…
The main characters of this paper are the moduli spaces $TM_{g,n}$ of rational tropical curves of genus $g$ with $n$ marked points, with $g\geq 2$. We reduce the study of the homotopy type of these spaces to the analysis of compact spaces $X_{g,n}$, which in turn possess natural representations as a homotopy colimits of diagrams of topological spaces over combinatorially defined generalized simplicial complexes $Δ_g$, with the latter being interesting on their own right. We use these homotopy colimit representations to describe a CW complex decomposition for each $X_{g,n}$. Furthermore, we use…
We provide an explicit formula for all primary genus-zero $r$-spin invariants. Our formula is piecewise polynomial in the monodromies at each marked point and in $r$. To deduce the structure of these invariants, we use a tropical realization of the corresponding cohomological field theories. We observe that the collection of all WDVV relations is equivalent to the relations deduced from the fact that genus-zero tropical CohFT cycles are balanced.
We show that the tropical projective Grassmannian of planes is homeomorphic to a closed subset of the analytic Grassmannian in Berkovich's sense by constructing a continuous section to the tropicalization map. Our main tool is an explicit description of the algebraic coordinate rings of the toric strata of the Grassmannian. We determine the fibers of the tropicalization map and compute the initial degenerations of all the toric strata. As a consequence, we prove that the tropical multiplicities of all points in the tropical projective Grassmannian are equal to one. Finally, we determine a piec…
A $K_4$-curve is a smooth, proper curve X of genus 3 over a nonarchimedean field whose Berkovich skeleton $Γ$ is a complete graph on 4 vertices. The curve X has 28 effective theta characteristics, i.e. the 28 bitangents to a canonical embedding, while $Γ$ has exactly seven tropical theta characteristics, as shown by Zharkov. We prove that the 28 effective theta characteristics of a $K_4$-curve specialize to the theta characteristics of its minimal skeleton in seven groups of four.
For a connected smooth projective curve $X$ of genus $g$, global sections of any line bundle $L$ with $°(L) \geq 2g+ 1$ give an embedding of the curve into projective space. We consider an analogous statement for a Berkovich skeleton in nonarchimedean geometry, in which projective space is replaced by tropical projective space, and an embedding is replaced by a homeomorphism onto its image preserving integral structures (called a faithful tropicalization). Let $K$ be an algebraically closed field which is complete with respect to a non-trivial nonarchimedean value. Suppose that $X$ is defined …
We produce Brill-Noether general graphs in every genus, confirming a conjecture of Baker and giving a new proof of the Brill-Noether Theorem, due to Griffiths and Harris, over any algebraically closed field.
We investigate the problem of counting tropical genus g curves in g-dimensional tropical abelian varieties. For g = 2, 3, we prove that the tropical count matches the count provided by Göttsche, Bryan-Leung, and Lange-Sernesi in the complex setting.
We construct immersions of trivalent abstract tropical curves in the Euclidean plane and embeddings of all abstract tropical curves in higher dimensional Euclidean space. Since not all curves have an embedding in the plane, we define the tropical crossing number of an abstract tropical curve to be the minimum number of self-intersections, counted with multiplicity, over all its immersions in the plane. We show that the tropical crossing number is at most quadratic in the number of edges and this bound is sharp. For curves of genus up to two, we systematically compute the crossing number. Final…
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…
A net is a special configuration of lines and points in the projective plane. There are certain restrictions on the number of its lines and points. We proved that there cannot be any (4,4) nets in $\mathbb{C}P^2$. In order to show this, we use tropical algebraic geometry. We tropicalize the hypothetical net and show that there cannot be such a configuration in $\mathbb{C}P^2$.
For a rational map $ϕ$ from a metric graph $\varGamma$ to a tropical projective space $\boldsymbol{TP^n}$ defined by a ratio of rational functions $f_1, \ldots, f_{n + 1}$, an automorphism $σ$ of $\varGamma$ induces a permutation of the coordinates of $\boldsymbol{TP^n}$ if $\{ f_1, \ldots, f_{n + 1} \}$ is $\langle σ\rangle$-invariant. Through this description, we can realize the automorphism group of $Γ$ as ambient automorphism group such as tropical projective general linear group, tropical general linear group and $\boldsymbol{Z}$-linear transformation group of Euclidean space.
We give an explicit description of theta-characteristics on tropical curves and characterize the effective ones. We construct the moduli space for tropical theta-characteristics of genus g as a generalized cone complex. We describe the fibers of the specialization map from the classical moduli space of theta-characteristics on algebraic curves to our moduli space of tropical theta-characteristics.
We show that there exists a surjection from the set of effective divisors of degree $g$ on a tropical curve of genus $g$ to its Jacobian by using a tropical version of the Riemann-Roch theorem. We then show that the restriction of the surjection is reduced to the bijection on an appropriate subset of the set of effective divisors of degree $g$ on the curve. Thus the subset of effective divisors has the additive group structure induced from the Jacobian. We finally realize the addition in Jacobian of a tropical hyperelliptic curve of genus $g$ via the intersection with a tropical curve of degre…
Tropical geometry is used to develop a new approach to the theory of discriminants and resultants in the sense of Gel'fand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky. The tropical A-discriminant, which is the tropicalization of the dual variety of the projective toric variety given by an integer matrix A, is shown to coincide with the Minkowski sum of the row space of A and of the tropicalization of the kernel of A. This leads to an explicit positive formula for the extreme monomials of any A-discriminant, without any smoothness assumption.
We study the relationship between tropical and classical Hurwitz moduli spaces. Following recent work of Abramovich, Caporaso and Payne, we outline a tropicalization for the moduli space of generalized Hurwitz covers of an arbitrary genus curve. Our approach is to appeal to the geometry of admissible covers, which compactify the Hurwitz scheme. We define and construct a moduli space of tropical admissible covers, and study its relationship with the skeleton of the Berkovich analytification of the classical space of admissible covers. We use techniques from non-archimedean geometry to show that…
