We study the classical result by Bruijn and Erd\H os regarding the bound on the number of lines determined by a $n$-point configuration in the plane, and in the light of the recently proven Tropical Sylvester-Gallai theorem, come up with a tropical version of the above-mentioned result. In this work, we introduce stable tropical lines, which help in answering questions pertaining to incidence geometry in the tropical plane. Projective duality in the tropical plane helps in translating the question for stable lines to stable intersections that have been previously studied in depth. Invoking duality between Newton subdivisions and line arrangements, we are able to classify stable intersections with shapes of cells in subdivisions, and this ultimately helps us in coming up with a bound. In this process, we also encounter various unique properties of linear Newton subdivisions which are dual to tropical line arrangements.
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.
We illustrate the use of tropical methods by generalizing a formula due to Abramovich and Bertram, extended later by Vakil. Namely, we exhibit relations between enumerative invariants of the Hirzebruch surfaces $Σ_n$ and $Σ_{n+2}$, obtained by deforming the first surface to the latter. Our strategy involves a tropical counterpart of deformations of Hirzebruch surfaces, and tropical enumerative geometry on a tropical surface in three-space.
Tropical mathematics redefines the rules of arithmetic by replacing addition with taking a maximum, and by replacing multiplication with addition. After briefly discussing a tropical version of linear algebra, we study polynomials build with these new operations. These equations define piecewise-linear geometric objects called tropical varieties. We explore these tropical varieties in two and three dimensions, building up discrete tools for studying them and determining their geometric properties. We then discuss the relationship between tropical geometry and algebraic geometry, which consider…
The paper consists of lecture notes for a mini-course given by the authors at the Gökova Geometry \& Topology conference in May 2014. We start the exposition with tropical curves in the plane and their applications to problems in classical enumerative geometry, and continue with a look at more general tropical varieties and their homology theories.
Recently, Baker and Norine have proven a Riemann-Roch theorem for finite graphs. We extend their results to metric graphs and thus establish a Riemann-Roch theorem for divisors on (abstract) tropical curves.
Analogously as in classical algebraic geometry, linear pencils of tropical plane curves are parameterized by tropical lines in a coefficient space. A special example of such a linear pencil is the set of tropical plane curves with an n-element support set through a general configuration of n points in the tropical plane. In [RGST], it is proved that these linear pencils are compatible with their support set. In this article, we give a characterization of points lying in the fixed locus of a tropical linear pencil and show that each compatible linear pencil comes from a general configuration.
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 rea…
Abstractly, tropical hyperelliptic curves are metric graphs that admit a two-to-one harmonic morphism to a tree. They also appear as embedded tropical curves in the plane arising from triangulations of polygons with all interior lattice points collinear. We prove that hyperelliptic graphs can only arise from such polygons. Along the way we will prove certain graphs do not embed tropically in the plane due to entirely combinatorial obstructions, regardless of whether their metric is actually hyperelliptic.
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…
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 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 this paper, we classify singular real plane tropical curves by means of subdivisions of Newton polytopes. First, we introduce signed Bergman fans (generalizing positive Bergman fans from [AKW06]) that describe real tropicalizations of real linear spaces ([Tab15]). Then, we establish a duality of real plane tropical curves and signed regular subdivisions of the Newton polytope and explore the combinatorics. We define a signed secondary fan that parametrizes real tropical Laurent polynomials and study the subset providing singular real plane tropical curves. A cone of the signed secondary fan…
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 smooth tropical plane quartic curves and show that they satisfy certain properties analogous to (but also different from) smooth plane quartics in algebraic geometry. For example, we show that every such curve admits either infinitely many or exactly 7 bitangent lines. We also prove that a smooth tropical plane quartic curve cannot be hyperelliptic.
A smooth tropical quartic curve has seven tropical bitangent classes. Their shapes can vary within the same combinatorial type of curve. We study deformations of these shapes and we show that the conditions determined by Cueto and Markwig for lifting them to real bitangent lines are independent of the deformations. From this we deduce a tropical proof of Plücker and Zeuthen's count of the number of real bitangents to smooth plane quartic curves.
The tropical Grassmannian parameterizes tropicalizations of linear spaces, while the Dressian parameterizes all planes in $\TP^{n-1}$. We study these parameter spaces and we compute them explicitly for $n \leq 7$. Planes are identified with matroid subdivisions and with arrangements of trees. These representations are used to draw pictures.
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.
Tropical geometry is sensitive to embeddings of algebraic varieties inside toric varieties. The purpose of this paper is to advertise tropical modifications as a tool to locally repair bad embeddings of plane curves, allowing the re-embedded tropical curve to better reflect the geometry of the input curve. Our approach is based on the close connection between analytic curves (in the sense of Berkovich) and tropical curves. We investigate the effect of these tropical modifications on the tropicalization map defined on the analytification of the given curve. Our study is motivated by the case of…
We study rational double Hurwitz cycles, i.e. loci of marked rational stable curves admitting a map to the projective line with assigned ramification profiles over two fixed branch points. Generalizing the phenomenon observed for double Hurwitz numbers, such cycles are piecewise polynomial in the entries of the special ramification; the chambers of polynomiality and wall crossings have an explicit and "modular" description. A main goal of this paper is to simultaneously carry out this investigation for the corresponding objects in tropical geometry, underlining a precise combinatorial duality …
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.
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 $g \leq 5$.
We construct motivic invariants of a subvariety of an algebraic torus from its tropicalization and initial degenerations. More specifically, we introduce an invariant of a compactification of such a variety called the "tropical motivic nearby fiber." This invariant specializes in the schon case to the Hodge-Deligne polynomial of the limit mixed Hodge structure of a corresponding degeneration. We give purely combinatorial expressions for this Hodge-Deligne polynomial in the cases of schon hypersurfaces and smooth tropical varieties. We also deduce a formula for the Euler characteristic of a gen…
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 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…
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.
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 study moduli spaces of rational weighted stable tropical curves, and their connections with the classical Hassett spaces. Given a vector w of weights, the moduli space of tropical w-stable curves can be given the structure of a balanced fan if and only if w has only heavy and light entries. In this case, we can express the moduli space as the Bergman fan of a graphic matroid. Furthermore, we realize the tropical moduli space as a geometric tropicalization, and as a Berkovich skeleton, of the classical moduli space. This builds on previous work of Tevelev, Gibney--Maclagan, and Abramovich--C…
We introduce tropical dual numbers as an extension of tropical semiring. By this innovation, one can work with honest ideals, instead of congruences, and recover the Euclidean topology on affine tropical spaces similar to Zariski's approach in classical algebraic geometry. The bend loci of an ideal over tropical dual numbers coincides with the bend loci of a congruence over tropical semiring and this enables tropical dual numbers to serve as an algebraic structure for tropical geometry. Tropical Zariski topology on affine tropical spaces whose closed sets are non-linear loci of ideals over tro…
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…
The Cox ring of a del Pezzo surface of degree 3 has a distinguished set of 27 minimal generators. We investigate conditions under which the initial forms of these generators generate the initial algebra of this Cox ring. Sturmfels and Xu provide a classification in the case of degree 4 del Pezzo surfaces by subdividing the tropical Grassmannian $\operatorname{TGr}(2,\mathbb{Q}^5)$. After providing the necessary background on Cox-Nagata rings and Khovanskii bases, we review the classification obtained by Sturmfels and Xu. Then we describe our classification problem in the degree 3 case and its …
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…
We study bitangents of non-smooth tropical plane quartics. Our main result is that with appropriate multiplicities, every such curve has 7 equivalence classes of bitangent lines. Moreover, the multiplicity of bitangent lines varies continuously in families of tropical plane curves.
In analogy with the classical group law on a plane cubic curve, we define a group law on a smooth plane tropical cubic curve. We show that the resulting group is isomorphic to $S^1$.
Complex algebraic varieties become easy piecewise-linear objects after passing to the so-called tropical limit. Geometry of these limiting objects is known as tropical geometry. In this short survey we take a look at motivation and intuition behind this limit and consider a few simple examples of correspondence principle between classical and tropical geometries.
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…
We show that the number of combinatorial types of clusters of type $D_4$ modulo reflection-rotation is exactly equal to the number of combinatorial types of tropical planes in $\mathbb{TP}^5$. This follows from a result of Sturmfels and Speyer which classifies these tropical planes into seven combinatorial classes using a detailed study of the tropical Grassmannian $\operatorname{Gr}(3,6)$. Speyer and Williams show that the positive part $\operatorname{Gr}^+(3,6)$ of this tropical Grassmannian is combinatorially equivalent to a small coarsening of the cluster fan of type $D_4$. We provide a st…
The discriminant of a polynomial map is central to problems from affine geometry and singularity theory. Standard methods for characterizing it rely on elimination techniques that can often be ineffective. This paper concerns polynomial maps on the two-dimensional torus defined over a field of Puiseux series. We present a combinatorial procedure for computing the tropical curve of the discriminant of maps determined by generic polynomials with given supports. Our results enable one to compute the Newton polytope of the discriminant of complex polynomial maps on the plane.
These notes outline some basic notions of Tropical Geometry and survey some of its applications for problems in classical (real and complex) geometry. To appear in the Proceedings of the Madrid ICM.
In this paper we fully describe all tropical linear mappings in the tropical projective plane, that is, maps from the tropical plane to itself given by tropical multiplication by an order 3 matrix. An erratum has been added fixing two mistakes in the main paper.
We study the tropical lines contained in smooth tropical surfaces in R^3. On smooth tropical quadric surfaces we find two one-dimensional families of tropical lines, like in classical algebraic geometry. Unlike the classical case, however, there exist smooth tropical surfaces of any degree with infinitely many tropical lines.
We introduce the tropicalization of closed subschemes of a torus defined over a higher dimensional local field. We study the basic invariants of such tropicalizations. This is a generalization of the results of Einslieder, Kapranov, Lind, Speyer and Sturmfels to higher local fields.
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.
Given a tropical divisor $D$ in the intersection of two tropical plane curves, we study when it can be realized as the tropicalization of the intersection of two algebraic curves, and give a sufficient condition. We show that under a certain condition involving a graph determined by these tropical curves, we can algorithmically find algebraic curves such that the tropicalization of their intersection is $D$.
Using tropical geometry we propose a mirror construction for monomial degenerations of Calabi-Yau varieties in toric Fano varieties. The construction reproduces the mirror constructions by Batyrev for Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces and by Batyrev and Borisov for Calabi-Yau complete intersections. We apply the construction to Pfaffian examples and recover the mirror given by Rodland for the degree 14 Calabi-Yau threefold in PP^6 defined by the Pfaffians of a general linear 7x7 skew-symmetric matrix. We provide the necessary background knowledge entering into the tropical mirror construction such as t…
In this text, we merge ideas around the tropical hyperfield with the theory of ordered blueprints to give a new formulation of tropical scheme theory. The key insight is that a nonarchimedean absolute value can be considered as a morphism into the tropical hyperfield. In turn, ordered blueprints make it possible to consider the base change of a classical variety to the tropical hyperfield. We call this base change the scheme theoretic tropicalization of the classical variety. Our first main result describes the Berkovich analytification and the tropicalization of a classical variety as sets of…
