Tropical moduli spaces as symmetric Delta-complexes
Daniel Allcock, Daniel Corey, Sam Payne
备注：
12 pages. v2: improved exposition, added Remark 6.2 with an alternate proof via geometric group theory that tropical moduli spaces of curves are simply connected, revised title to more fully reflect range of content in paper
We develop techniques for studying fundamental groups and integral singular homology of symmetric Delta-complexes, and apply these techniques to study moduli spaces of stable tropical curves of unit volume, with and without marked points. As one application, we show that Delta_g and Delta_{g,n} are simply connected, for positive g. We also show that Delta_3 is homotopy equivalent to the 5-sphere, and that Delta_4 has 3-torsion in H_5.
Tropicalization is a procedure that assigns polyhedral complexes to algebraic subvarieties of a torus. If one fixes a weighted polyhedral complex, one may study the set of all subvarieties of a toric variety that have that complex as their tropicalization. This gives a "tropical realization" moduli functor. We use rigid analytic geometry and the combinatorics of Chow complexes as studied by Alex Fink to prove that when the ambient toric variety is quasiprojective, the moduli functor is represented by a rigid space. As an application, we show that if a polyhedral complex is the tropicalization …
We introduce tropical complexes, as an enrichment of the dual complex of a degeneration with additional data from non-transverse intersection numbers. We define cycles, divisors, and linear equivalence on tropical complexes, analogous both to the corresponding theories on algebraic varieties and to previous work on graphs and abstract tropical curves. In addition, we establish conditions for the divisor-curve intersection numbers on a tropical complex to agree with the generic fiber of a degeneration.
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This text is an introduction to algebraic enumerative geometry and to applications of tropical geometry to classical geometry, based on a course given during the X-UPS mathematical days, 2008 May 14th and 15th. The aim of this text is to be understandable by a first year master student.
In this paper we prove several lifting theorems for morphisms of tropical curves. We interpret the obstruction to lifting a finite harmonic morphism of augmented metric graphs to a morphism of algebraic curves as the non-vanishing of certain Hurwitz numbers, and we give various conditions under which this obstruction does vanish. In particular we show that any finite harmonic morphism of (non-augmented) metric graphs lifts. We also give various applications of these results. For example, we show that linear equivalence of divisors on a tropical curve C coincides with the equivalence relation g…
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The spinor variety is cut out by the quadratic Wick relations among the principal Pfaffians of an n x n skew-symmetric matrix. Its points correspond to n-dimensional isotropic subspaces of a 2n-dimensional vector space. In this paper we tropicalize this picture, and we develop a combinatorial theory of tropical Wick vectors and tropical linear spaces that are tropically isotropic. We characterize tropical Wick vectors in terms of subdivisions of Delta-matroid polytopes, and we examine to what extent the Wick relations form a tropical basis. Our theory generalizes several results for tropical l…
We study the topology of a space parametrizing stable tropical curves of genus g with volume 1, showing that its reduced rational homology is canonically identified with both the top weight cohomology of M_g and also with the genus g part of the homology of Kontsevich's graph complex. Using a theorem of Willwacher relating this graph complex to the Grothendieck-Teichmueller Lie algebra, we deduce that H^{4g-6}(M_g;Q) is nonzero for g=3, g=5, and g at least 7. This disproves a recent conjecture of Church, Farb, and Putman as well as an older, more general conjecture of Kontsevich. We also give …
We show how to equip the cone complexes of toroidal embeddings with additional structure that allows to define a balancing condition for weighted subcomplexes. We then proceed to develop the foundations of an intersection theory on cone complexes including push-forwards, intersections with tropical divisors, and rational equivalence. These constructions are shown to have an algebraic interpretation: Ulirsch's tropicalizations of subvarieties of toroidal embeddings carry natural multiplicities making them tropical cycles, and the induced tropicalization map for cycles respects push-forwards, in…
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…
Chambert-Loir and Ducros have recently introduced a theory of real valued differential forms and currents on Berkovich spaces. In analogy to the theory of forms with logarithmic singularities, we enlarge the space of differential forms by so called delta-forms on the non-archimedean analytification of an algebraic variety. This extension is based on an intersection theory for tropical cycles with smooth weights. We prove a generalization of the Poincaré-Lelong formula which allows us to represent the first Chern current of a formally metrized line bundle by a delta-form. We introduce the assoc…
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We compute the $S_n$-equivariant rational homology of the tropical moduli spaces $Δ_{2,n}$ for $n\leq 8$ using a cellular chain complex for symmetric $Δ$-complexes in Sage.
Via the BGG correspondence a simplicial complex Delta on [n] is transformed into a complex of coherent sheaves on P^n-1. We show that this complex reduces to a coherent sheaf F exactly when the Alexander dual Delta^* is Cohen-Macaulay. We then determine when both Delta and Delta^* are Cohen-Macaulay. This corresponds to F being a locally Cohen-Macaulay sheaf. Lastly we conjecture for which range of invariants of such Delta it must be a cone.
We construct a functorial decomposition of de Rham cohomology sheaves, called weight decomposition, for smooth analytic spaces over non-Archimedean fields embeddable into $\mathbf{C}_p$, which generalizes a construction of Berkovich and solves a question raised by him. We then investigate complexes of real tropical differential forms and currents introduced by Chambert-Loir and Ducros, by establishing a relation with the weight decomposition and defining tropical cycle maps with values in the corresponding Dolbeault cohomology. As an application, we show that algebraic cycles that are cohomolo…
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 the topology of the link $M^{\mathrm{trop}}_{g,n}[1]$ of the tropical moduli spaces of curves when g=2. Tropical moduli spaces can be identified with boundary complexes for $\mathcal{M}_{g,n}$, as shown by Abramovich-Caporaso-Payne, so their reduced rational homology encodes top-weight rational cohomology of the complex moduli spaces $\mathcal{M}_{g,n}$. We prove that $M^{\mathrm{trop}}_{2,n}[1]$ is an $n$-connected topological space whose reduced integral homology is supported in the top two degrees only. We compute the reduced Euler characteristic of $M^{\mathrm{trop}}_{g,n}[1]$ for…
Let X be a projective scheme carrying a circle action S with isolated fixed points. We associate a simplicial complex Delta(X,S) of "closure chains" using a refinement of its Morse/Bialynicki-Birula decomposition. If this decomposition is a stratification (e.g. when X is a flag manifold), then Delta(X,S) is just the order complex of the poset of fixed points. For X a toric variety, Delta(X,S) is a triangulation of the moment polytope. We compute some other examples, including a Bott-Samelson manifold and the punctual Hilbert scheme of 4 points in the plane. Summing over the facets of Delta(X,S…
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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 study a space of genus $g$ stable, $n$-marked tropical curves with total edge length $1$. Its rational homology is identified both with top-weight cohomology of the complex moduli space $M_{g,n}$ and with the homology of a marked version of Kontsevich's graph complex, up to a shift in degrees. We prove a contractibility criterion that applies to various large subspaces. From this we derive a description of the homotopy type of the tropical moduli space for $g = 1$, the top weight cohomology of $M_{1,n}$ as an $S_n$-representation, and additional calculations for small $(g,n)$. We also deduc…
A convex lattice polygon Delta determines a pair (S,L) of a toric surface together with an ample toric line bundle on S. The Severi degree N^{Delta,delta} is the number of delta-nodal curves in the complete linear system |L| passing through dim|L|-delta general points. Cooper and Pandharipande showed that in the case of PP^1 x PP^1 the Severi degrees can be computed as the matrix elements of an operator on a Fock space. In this note we want to generalize and extend this result in two ways. First we show that it holds more generally for Delta a so called h-transverse lattice polygon. This inclu…
We study differential forms on an algebraic compactification of a moduli space of metric graphs. Canonical examples of such forms are obtained by pulling back invariant differentials along a tropical Torelli map. The invariant differential forms in question generate the stable real cohomology of the general linear group, as shown by Borel. By integrating such invariant forms over the space of metrics on a graph, we define canonical period integrals associated to graphs, which we prove are always finite and take the form of generalised Feynman integrals. Furthermore, canonical integrals can be …
