Tropical geometry is a piecewise linear "shadow" of algebraic geometry. It allows for the computation of several cohomological invariants of an algebraic variety. In particular, its application to enumerative algebraic geometry led to significant progress.
In this survey, we give an introduction to tropical geometry techniques for algebraic curve counting problems. We also survey some recent developments, with a particular emphasis on the computation of the degree of the Severi varieties of the complex projective plane and other toric surfaces as well as Hurwitz numbers and applications to real enumerative geometry. This paper is based on the author's lecture at the Workshop on Tropical Geometry and Integrable Systems in Glasgow, July 2011.
Tropical counting tools are useful for many enumerative questions. We count tropical multinodal surfaces using floor plans, looking at the case when two nodes are tropically close together, i.e., unseparated. We generalize tropical floor plans to recover the count of multinodal curves. We then prove that for $δ=2$ or $3$ nodes, tropical surfaces with unseparated nodes contribute asymptotically to the second order term of the polynomial giving the degree of the family of complex projective surfaces in $\mathbb{P}^3$ of degree $d$ with $δ$ nodes. We classify when two nodes in a surface tropicali…
We enumerate rational curves in toric surfaces passing through points and satisfying cross-ratio constraints using tropical and combinatorial methods. Our starting point is arXiv:1509.07453, where a tropical-algebraic correspondence theorem was proved that relates counts of rational curves in toric varieties that satisfy point conditions and cross-ratio constraints to the analogous tropical counts. We proceed in two steps: based on tropical intersection theory we first study tropical cross-ratios and introduce degenerated cross-ratios. Second we provide a lattice path algorithm that produces a…
The Severi degree is the degree of the Severi variety parametrizing plane curves of degree d with delta nodes. Recently, Göttsche and Shende gave two refinements of Severi degrees, polynomials in a variable y, which are conjecturally equal, for large d. At y = 1, one of the refinements, the relative Severi degree, specializes to the (non-relative) Severi degree. We give a tropical description of the refined Severi degrees, in terms of a refined tropical curve count for all toric surfaces. We also refine the equivalent count of floor diagrams for Hirzebruch and rational ruled surfaces. Our desc…
This is a follow-up paper of arXiv:1805.00115, where rational curves in surfaces that satisfy general positioned point and cross-ratio conditions were enumerated. A suitable correspondence theorem provided in arXiv:1509.07453 allowed us to use tropical geometry, and, in particular, a degeneration technique called floor diagrams. This correspondence theorem also holds in higher dimension. In the current paper, we introduce so-called cross-ratio floor diagrams and show that they allow us to determine the number of rational space curves that satisfy general positioned point and cross-ratio condit…
This is an expository introduction to tropical algebraic geometry based on my lectures at the Workshop on Tropical Geometry and Integrable Systems in Glasgow, July 4-8, 2011, and at the ELGA 2011 school on Algebraic Geometry and Applications in Buenos Aires, August 1-5, 2011.
To each prime ideal in a polynomial ring over a field we associate an algebraic matroid and show that it is preserved under tropicalization. This gives a necessary condition for a tropical variety to be set-theoretically realizable from a prime ideal. We also show that there are infinitely many Bergman fans that are not set-theoretically realizable as the tropicalization of any ideal.
Using Lagrangian Floer theory, we study the tropical geometry of K3 surfaces with general singular fibres. In particular, we give the local models for the type $I_n$, $II$, $III$ and $IV$ singular fibres in the Kodaira's classification and generalize the correspondence theorem between open Gromov-Witten invariants/tropical discs counting to these cases.
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.
Counts of curves in $\mathbb{P}^1\times\mathbb{P}^1$ with fixed contact order with the toric boundary and satisfying point conditions can be determined with tropical methods by Mikhalkin. If we require that our curves intersect the zero- and infinity-section only in points of contact order $1$, but allow arbitrary contact order for the zero- and infinity-fiber, the corresponding numbers reveal beautiful structural properties such as piecewise polynomiality, similar to the case of double Hurwitz numbers counting covers of $\mathbb{P}^1$ with special ramification profiles over zero and infinity …
We discuss the classical problem of counting planes tangent to general canonical sextic curves at three points. We determine the number of real tritangents when such a curve is real. We then revisit a curve constructed by Emch with the greatest known number of real tritangents, and conversely construct a curve with very few real tritangents. Using recent results on the relation between algebraic and tropical theta characteristics, we show that the tropicalization of a canonical sextic curve has 15 tritangent planes.
Block and Göttsche have defined a $q$-number refinement of counts of tropical curves in $\mathbb{R}^2$. Under the change of variables $q=e^{iu}$, we show that the result is a generating series of higher genus log Gromov-Witten invariants with insertion of a lambda class. This gives a geometric interpretation of the Block-Göttsche invariants and makes their deformation invariance manifest.
In this paper, we define two numbers. One comes from counting tropical curves with a stop and the other is the number of holomorphic discs in toric varieties with Lagrangian boundary condition. Both of these curves should satisfy some matching conditions. We show that these numbers coincide. These numbers can be considered as Gromov-Witten type invariants for holomorphic discs, and they have both similarities and differences to the counting numbers of closed holomorphic curves. We study several aspects of them.
In this note I will explain how relative/log Gromov-Witten invariants of pairs $(X,D)$ with very ample smooth anticanonical divisor $D$ can be computed using algebro-combinatorial objects called scattering diagrams. The underlying principle behind this computational method is a tropical correspondence theorem for non-toric cases, which I will explain briefly. By computing some examples I will give an introduction to a sage code that I wrote for computing scattering diagrams.
We study the stationary descendant Gromov-Witten theory of toric surfaces by combining and extending a range of techniques - tropical curves, floor diagrams, and Fock spaces. A correspondence theorem is established between tropical curves and descendant invariants on toric surfaces using maximal toric degenerations. An intermediate degeneration is then shown to give rise to floor diagrams, giving a geometric interpretation of this well-known bookkeeping tool in tropical geometry. In the process, we extend floor diagram techniques to include descendants in arbitrary genus. These floor diagrams …
In complex algebraic geometry, the problem of enumerating plane elliptic curves of given degree with fixed complex structure has been solved by R.Pandharipande using Gromov-Witten theory. In this article we treat the tropical analogue of this problem, the determination of the number of tropical elliptic plane curves of degree d and fixed ``tropical j-invariant'' interpolating an appropriate number of points in general position. We show that this number is independent of the position of the points and the value of the j-invariant and that it coincides with the number of complex elliptic curves.…
We determine necessary and sufficient conditions for real algebraic curves near the non-singular tropical limit to be hyperbolic with respect to a point, thus generalising Speyer's classification of stable curves near the tropical limit. In order to obtain the conditions, we develop tools of real tropical intersection theory. We introduce the tropical hyperbolicity locus and the signed tropical hyperbolicity locus of a real algebraic curve near the non-singular tropical limit. In the case of honeycombs, we characterise the tropical hyperbolicity locus in terms of the set of twisted edges on th…
In this paper we study a construction of algebraic curves from combinatorial data. In the study of algebraic curves through degeneration, graphs usually appear as the dual intersection graph of the central fiber. Properties of such graphs can be encoded in so-called tropical curves. Our main concern is the relation between algebraic curves and tropical curves where the deformation problem is obstructed. Particular emphasis is put on the role of higher valent vertices of tropical curves, which has not been developed well so far in spite of its importance in this area of study. We will give a ge…
This paper introduces the foundations of the polynomial algebra and basic structures for algebraic geometry over the extended tropical semiring. Our development, which includes the tropical version for the fundamental theorem of algebra, leads to the reduced polynomial semiring -- a structure that provides a basis for developing a tropical analogue to the classical theory of commutative algebra. The use of the new notion of tropical algebraic com-sets, built upon the complements of tropical algebraic sets, eventually yields the tropical algebraic Nullstellensatz.
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 $\text{Trop}(X^*)$.
Patchworking theorems serve as a basic element of the correspondence between tropical and algebraic curves, which is a core of the tropical enumerative geometry. We present a new version of a patchworking theorem which relates plane tropical curves with complex and real algebraic curves having prescribed multiple points. It can be used to compute Welschinger invariants of non-toric Del Pezzo surfaces.
We show that the counting of rational curves on a complete toric variety that are in general position to the toric prime divisors coincides with the counting of certain tropical curves. The proof is algebraic-geometric and relies on degeneration techniques and log deformation theory. This generalizes results of Mikhalkin obtained by different methods in the surface case to arbitrary dimensions.
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 lifts of tropical bitangents to the tropicalization of a given complex algebraic curve together with their lifting multiplicities. Using this characterization, we show that generically all the seven bitangents of a smooth tropical plane quartic lift in sets of four to algebraic bitangents. We do this constructively, i.e. we give solutions for the initial terms of the coefficients of the bitangent lines. This is a step towards a tropical proof that a general smooth quartic admits 28 bitangent lines. The methods are also appropriate to count real bitangents, however the conditions to de…
Tropicalization is a procedure that takes subvarieties of an algebraic torus to balanced weighted rational complexes in space. In this paper, we study the tropicalizations of curves in surfaces in 3-space. These are balanced rational weighted graphs in tropical surfaces. Specifically, we study the `lifting' problem: given a graph in a tropical surface, can one find a corresponding algebraic curve in a surface? We develop specific combinatorial obstructions to lifting a graph by reducing the problem to the question of whether or not one can factor a polynomial with particular support in the cha…
We study algebraic and combinatorial aspects of (classical) projections of $m$-dimensional tropical varieties onto $(m+1)$-dimensional planes. Building upon the work of Sturmfels, Tevelev, and Yu on tropical elimination as well as the work of the authors on projection-based tropical bases, we characterize algebraic properties of the relevant ideals and provide a characterization of the dual subdivision (as a subdivision of a fiber polytope). This dual subdivision naturally leads to the issue of self-intersections of a tropical variety under projections. For the case of curves, we provide some …
Tropical algebraic geometry is an active new field of mathematics that establishes and studies some very general principles to translate algebro-geometric problems into purely combinatorial ones. This expository paper gives an introduction to these new techniques with a special emphasis on the recent applications to problems in enumerative geometry.
In this paper we construct a tropical moduli space parametrizing roots of divisors on tropical curves. We study the relation between this space and the skeleton of Jarvis moduli space of nets of limit roots on stable curves. We show that the combinatorics of the moduli space of tropical roots is governed by the poset of flows, a poset parametrizing certain flows on graphs.
Tropical algebraic geometry is the geometry of the tropical semiring $(\mathbb{R},\min,+)$. Its objects are polyhedral cell complexes which behave like complex algebraic varieties. We give an introduction to this theory, with an emphasis on plane curves and linear spaces. New results include a complete description of the families of quadrics through four points in the tropical projective plane and a counterexample to the incidence version of Pappus' Theorem.
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 show that the non-Archimedean skeleton of the $d$-th symmetric power of a smooth projective algebraic curve $X$ is naturally isomorphic to the $d$-th symmetric power of the tropical curve that arises as the non-Archimedean skeleton of $X$. The retraction to the skeleton is precisely the specialization map for divisors. Moreover, we show that the process of tropicalization naturally commutes with the diagonal morphisms and the Abel-Jacobi map and we exhibit a faithful tropicalization for symmetric powers of curves. Finally, we prove a version of the Bieri-Groves Theorem that allows us, under…
We study the combinatorial properties of 2-dimensional tropical complexes. In particular, we prove tropical analogues of the Hodge index theorem and Noether's formula. In addition, we introduce algebraic equivalence for divisors on tropical complexes of arbitrary dimension.
We construct the moduli space for equivalence classes of n-pointed tropical curves of genus g, together with its compactification given by weighted tropical curves, and establish some of its basic topological properties. We compare it to the moduli spaces of smooth and stable algebraic curves, from the combinatorial, the topological, and the Teichmüller point of view. The paper is written in an expository style, and it generalizes some results contained in sections 4-6 of arXiv:1001.2815v3.
In the 1990's, Itenberg and Haas studied the relations between combinatorial data in Viro's patchworking and the topology of the resulting non-singular real algebraic curves in the projective plane. Using recent results from Renaudineau and Shaw on real algebraic curves near the non-singular tropical limit, we continue the study of Itenberg and Haas inside any non-singular projective toric surface. We give new Haas' like criteria for patchworking non-singular real algebraic curves with prescribed number of connected components, in terms of twisted edges on a non-singular tropical curve. We the…
In recent years a series of remarkable advances in tropical geometry and in non-archimedean geometry have brought new insights to the moduli theory of algebraic curves and their Jacobians. The goal of this survey, an expanded version of my talks at the 2015 AMS symposium in algebraic geometry and at AGNES 2016, is to present some of the results in this area.
We prove that Viro's patchworking produces real algebraic curves with the maximal number of real inflection points. In particular this implies that maximally inflected real algebraic $M$-curves realize many isotopy types. The strategy we adopt in this paper is tropical: we study tropical limits of inflection points of classical plane algebraic curves. The main tropical tool we use to understand these tropical inflection points are tropical modifications.
This is mostly* a non-technical exposition of the joint work arXiv:1212.0373 with Caporaso and Payne. Topics include: Moduli of Riemann surfaces / algebraic curves; Deligne-Mumford compactification; Dual graphs and the combinatorics of the compactification; Tropical curves and their moduli; Non-archimedean geometry and comparison. * Maybe the last section is technical.
We describe the stabilizers of points in the Bruhat-Tits building of the group SL with tropical geometry. There are several compactifications of this building associated to algebraic representations of SL. We show that the fans used to compactify apartments in this theory are given by tropical Schur polynomials.
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…
We study the tropicalizations of analytic subvarieties of normal toric varieties over complete non-archimedean valuation fields. We show that a Zariski closed analytic subvariety of a normal toric variety is algebraic if its tropicalization is a finite union of polyhedra. Previously, the converse direction was known by the theorem of Bieri and Groves. Over the field of complex numbers, Madani, L. Nisse, and M. Nisse proved similar results for analytic subvarieties of tori.
On tropical geometry in $\rr^2$, the divisor and the Jacobian variety are defined in analogy to algebraic geometry. For study of these objects, it is important to think of the `bunch' of a tropical curve. In this paper, we will show that if the bunch is a bouquet, then the Jacobian is a higher-dimensional torus.
We explore the explicit relationship between the descendant Gromov--Witten theory of target curves, operators on Fock spaces, and tropical curve counting. We prove a classical/tropical correspondence theorem for descendant invariants and give an algorithm that establishes a tropical Gromov--Witten/Hurwitz equivalence. Tropical curve counting is related to an algebra of operators on the Fock space by means of bosonification. In this manner, tropical geometry provides a convenient "graphical user interface" for Okounkov and Pandharipande's celebrated GW/H correspondence. An important goal of thi…
The tropical semifield, i.e., the real numbers enhanced by the operations of addition and maximum, serves as a base of tropical mathematics. Addition is an abelian group operation, whereas the maximum defines an idempotent semigroup structure. We address the question of the geometry of idempotent semigroups, in particular, tropical algebraic sets carrying the structure of a commutative idempotent semigroup. We show that commutative idempotent semigroups are contractible, that systems of tropical polynomials, formed from univariate monomials, define subsemigroups with respect to coordinate-wise…
The notion of geometric construction is introduced. This notion allows to compare incidence configurations in the algebraic and tropical plane. We provide an algorithm such that, given a tropical instance of a geometric construction, it computes sufficient conditions to have an algebraic counterpart related by tropicalization. We also provide sufficient conditions in a geometric construction to ensure that the algebraic counterpart always exists. Geometric constructions are applied to transfer classical theorems to the tropical framework, we provide a notion of incidence theorems and prove sev…
Tropical Differential Algebraic Geometry considers difficult or even intractable problems in Differential Equations and tries to extract information on their solutions from a restricted structure of the input. The Fundamental Theorem of Tropical Differential Algebraic Geometry states that the support of solutions of systems of ordinary differential equations with formal power series coefficients over an uncountable algebraically closed field of characteristic zero can be obtained by solving a so-called tropicalized differential system. Tropicalized differential equations work on a completely d…
The Ceresa cycle is an algebraic cycle attached to a smooth algebraic curve with a marked point, which is trivial when the curve is hyperelliptic with a marked Weierstrass point. The image of the Ceresa cycle under a certain cycle class map provides a class in étale cohomology called the Ceresa class. Describing the Ceresa class explicitly for non-hyperelliptic curves is in general not easy. We present a "combinatorialization" of this problem, explaining how to define a Ceresa class for a tropical algebraic curve, and also for a topological surface endowed with a multiset of commuting Dehn twi…
Tropicalization is a procedure for associating a polyhedral complex in Euclidean space to a subvariety of an algebraic torus. We study the question of which graphs arise from tropicalizing algebraic curves. By using Baker's specialization of linear systems from curves to graphs, we are able to give a necessary condition for a balanced weighted graph to be the tropicalization of a curve. Our condition reproduces a generalization of Speyer's well-spacedness condition and also gives new conditions. In addition, it suggests a new combinatorial structure on tropicalizations of algebraic curves.
