This survey consists of two parts. Part 1 is devoted to amoebas. These are images of algebraic subvarieties in the complex torus under the logarithmic moment map. The amoebas have essentially piecewise-linear shape if viewed at large. Furthermore, they degenerate to certain piecewise-linear objects called tropical varieties whose behavior is governed by algebraic geometry over the so-called tropical semifield. Geometric aspects of tropical algebraic geometry are the content of Part 2. We pay special attention to tropical curves. Both parts also include relevant applications of the theories. Part 1 of this survey is a revised and updated version of an earlier prepreint of 2001.
In this paper we try to look at the compactification of Teichmuller spaces from a tropical viewpoint. We describe a general construction for the compactification of algebraic varieties, using their amoebas, and we describe the boundary via tropical varieties. When we apply this construction to the Teichmuller spaces we see that they can be mapped in a real algebraic hypersurface in such a way that the cone over the boundary is a subpolyhedron of a tropical hypersurface. We want to show how some properties of the boundary becomes straightforward if looked at from this point of view. For example…
We study the non-archimedean counterpart to the complex amoeba of an algebraic variety, and show that it coincides with a polyhedral set defined by Bieri and Groves using valuations. For hypersurfaces this set is also the tropical variety of the defining polynomial. Using non-archimedean analysis and a recent result of Conrad we prove that the amoeba of an irreducible variety is connected. We introduce the notion of an adelic amoeba for varieties over global fields, and establish a form of the local-global principle for them. This principle is used to explain the calculation of the nonexpansiv…
The amoebas associated to algebraic varieties are certain concave regions in the Euclidean space whose shape reminds biological amoebas. This term was formally introduced to Mathematics in 1994 by Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevinski. Some traces of amoebas were appearing from time to time, even before the formal introduction, as auxiliary tools in several problems. After 1994 amoebas have been seen and studied in several areas of mathematics, from algebraic geometry and topology to complex analysis and combinatorics. In particular, amoebas provided a very powerful tool for studying topology of al…
We study generic intersection (or web) of vortices with instantons inside, which is a 1/4 BPS state in the Higgs phase of five-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric U(Nc) gauge theory on R_t \times (C^\ast)^2 \simeq R^{2,1} \times T^2 with Nf=Nc Higgs scalars in the fundamental representation. In the case of the Abelian-Higgs model (Nf=Nc=1), the intersecting vortex sheets can be beautifully understood in a mathematical framework of amoeba and tropical geometry, and we propose a dictionary relating solitons and gauge theory to amoeba and tropical geometry. A projective shape of vortex sheets is descr…
\textit{Harmonic amoebas} are generalisations of amoebas of algebraic curves immersed in complex tori. Introduced in \cite{Kri}, the consideration of such objects suggests to enlarge the scope of tropical geometry. In the present paper, we introduce the notion of harmonic morphisms from tropical curves to affine spaces and show how these morphisms can be systematically described as limits of families of harmonic amoeba maps on Riemann surfaces. It extends previous results about approximation of tropical curves in affine spaces and provides a different point of view on Mikhalkin's approximation…
To every rational complex curve $C \subset (\mathbf{C}^\times)^n$ we associate a rational tropical curve $Γ\subset \mathbf{R}^n$ so that the amoeba $\mathcal{A}(C) \subset \mathbf{R}^n$ of $C$ is within a bounded distance from $Γ$. In accordance with the terminology introduced by Passare and Rullgård, we call $Γ$ the spine of $\mathcal{A}(C)$. We use spines to describe tropical limits of sequences of rational complex curves.
An $n$-dimensional algebraic variety in $({\mathbb C}^\times)^{2n}$ covers its amoeba as well as its coamoeba generically finite-to-one. We provide an upper bound for the volume of these amoebas as well as for the number of points in the inverse images under the amoeba and coamoeba maps.
Given any complex Laurent polynomial $f$, $\mathrm{Amoeba}(f)$ is the image of its complex zero set under the coordinate-wise log absolute value map. We give an efficiently constructible polyhedral approximation, $\mathrm{ArchtTrop}(f)$, of $\mathrm{Amoeba}(f)$, and derive explicit upper and lower bounds, solely as a function of the number of monomial terms of $f$, for the Hausdorff distance between these two sets. We also show that deciding whether a given point lies in $\mathrm{ArchTrop}(f)$ is doable in polynomial-time, for any fixed dimension, unlike the corresponding problem for $\mathrm{…
This paper studies the curvatures of amoebas and real amoebas (i.e. essentially logarithmic curvatures of the complex and real parts of a real algebraic hypersurface) and of tropical and real tropical hypersurfaces. If V is a tropical hypersurface defined over the field of real Puiseux series, it has a real part RV which is a polyhedral complex. We define the total curvature of V (resp. RV) by using the total curvature of Amoebas and passing to the limit. We also define the "polyhedral total curvature" of the real part RV of a generic tropical hypersurface. The main results we prove about thes…
We consider Gromov's homological higher convexity for complements of tropical varieties, establishing it for complements of tropical hypersurfaces and curves, and for nonarchimedean amoebas of varieties that are complete intersections over the field of complex Puiseaux series. Based on these results, we conjecture that the complement of a tropical variety has this higher convexity, and we prove a weak form of our conjecture for the nonarchimedean amoeba of a variety over the complex Puiseaux field. One of our main tools is Jonsson's limit theorem for tropical varieties.
In this paper, we study the amoeba volume of a given $k-$dimensional generic analytic variety $V$ of the complex algebraic torus $(\C^*)^n$. When $n\geq 2k$, we show that $V$ is algebraic if and only if the volume of its amoeba is finite. In this precise case, we establish a comparison theorem for the volume of the amoeba and the coamoeba. Examples and applications to the $k-$linear spaces will be given.
Exploiting a connection between amoebas and tropical curves, we devise a method for computing tropical curves using numerical algebraic geometry and give an implementation. As an application, we use this technique to compute Newton polygons of $A$-polynomials of knots.
Amoebas and coamoebas are the logarithmic images of algebraic varieties and the images of algebraic varieties under the arg-map, respectively. We present new techniques for computational problems on amoebas and coamoebas, thus establishing new connections between (co-)amoebas, semialgebraic and convex algebraic geometry and semidefinite programming. Our approach is based on formulating the membership problem in amoebas (respectively coamoebas) as a suitable real algebraic feasibility problem. Using the real Nullstellensatz, this allows to tackle the problem by sums of squares techniques and se…
Amoebas are projections of complex algebraic varieties in the algebraic torus under a Log-absolute value map, which have connections to various mathematical subjects. While amoebas of hypersurfaces have been intensively studied in recent years, the non-hypersurface case is barely understood so far. We investigate intersections of amoebas of $n$ hypersurfaces in $(\mathbb{C}^*)^n$, which are canonical supersets of amoebas given by non-hypersurface varieties. Our main results are amoeba analogs of Bernstein's Theorem and Bézout's Theorem providing an upper bound for the number of connected compo…
The amoeba of an affine algebraic variety V in (C^*)^r is the image of V under the map (z_1, ..., z_r) -> (log|z_1|, ..., log|z_r|). We give a characterisation of the amoeba based on the triangle inequality, which we call testing for lopsidedness. We show that if a point is outside the amoeba of V, there is an element of the defining ideal which witnesses this fact by being lopsided. This condition is necessary and sufficient for amoebas of arbitrary codimension, as well as for compactifications of amoebas inside any toric variety. Our approach naturally leads to methods for approximating hype…
Let $V$ be a complex algebraic hypersurface defined by a polynomial $f$ with Newton polytope $Δ$. It is well known that the spine of its amoeba has a structure of a tropical hypersurface. We prove in this paper that there exists a complex tropical hypersurface $V_{\infty, f}$ such that its coamoeba is homeomorphic to the closure in the real torus of the coamoeba of $V$. Moreover, the coamoeba of $V_{\infty, f}$ contains an arrangement of $(n-1)$-torus depending only on the geometry of $Δ$ and the coefficients of $f$. In addition, we can consider this arrangement, as a weighted codual hyperplan…
Given a smooth projective toric variety X, we construct an A-infinity category of Lagrangians with boundary on a level set of the Landau-Ginzburg mirror of X. We prove that this category is quasi-equivalent to the DG category of line bundles on X. This establishes part of the Homological Mirror Conjecture for toric varieties.
The paper deals with amoebas of $k$-dimensional algebraic varieties in the algebraic complex torus of dimension $n\geq 2k$. First, we show that the area of complex algebraic curve amoebas is finite. Moreover, we give an estimate of this area in the rational curve case in terms of the degree of the rational parametrization coordinates. We also show that the volume of the amoeba of $k$-dimensional algebraic variety in $(\mathbb{C}^*)^{n}$, with $n\geq 2k$, is finite.
An amoeba is the image of a subvariety of an algebraic torus under the logarithmic moment map. We consider some qualitative aspects of amoebas, establishing some results and posing problems for further study. These problems include determining the dimension of an amoeba, describing an amoeba as a semi-algebraic set, and identifying varieties whose amoebas are a finite intersection of amoebas of hypersurfaces. We show that an amoeba that is not of full dimension is not such a finite intersection if its variety is nondegenerate and we describe amoebas of lines as explicit semi-algebraic sets.
Amoebae from tropical geometry and the Mahler measure from number theory play important roles in quiver gauge theories and dimer models. Their dependencies on the coefficients of the Newton polynomial closely resemble each other, and they are connected via the Ronkin function. Genetic symbolic regression methods are employed to extract the numerical relationships between the 2d and 3d amoebae components and the Mahler measure. We find that the volume of the bounded complement of a d-dimensional amoeba is related to the gas phase contribution to the Mahler measure by a degree-d polynomial, with…
We derive efficient algorithms for coarse approximation of algebraic hypersurfaces, useful for estimating the distance between an input polynomial zero set and a given query point. Our methods work best on sparse polynomials of high degree (in any number of variables) but are nevertheless completely general. The underlying ideas, which we take the time to describe in an elementary way, come from tropical geometry. We thus reduce a hard algebraic problem to high-precision linear optimization, proving new upper and lower complexity estimates along the way.
We define the generalized logarithmic Gauss map for algebraic varieties of the complex algebraic torus of any codimension. Moreover, we describe the set of critical points of the logarithmic mapping restricted to our variety, and we show an analogous of Mikhalkin's result on the critical points of the logarithmic map restricted to a hypersurfaces.
In this text, we show that locally tropically convex tropical varieties in $\mathbb{R}^n$ have locally a canonical polyhedral structure that satisfies higher balancing conditions at all cells of positive codimension.
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.
We give a tropical description of the counting of real log curves in toric degenerations of toric varieties. We treat the case of genus zero curves and all non-superabundant higher-genus situations. The proof relies on log deformation theory and is a real version of the Nishinou-Siebert approach to the tropical correspondence theorem for complex curves. In dimension two, we use similar techniques to study the counting of real log curves with Welschinger signs and we obtain a new proof of Mikhalkin's tropical correspondence theorem for Welschinger invariants.
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 apply ideas from intersection theory on toric varieties to tropical intersection theory. We introduce mixed Minkowski weights on toric varieties which interpolate between equivariant and ordinary Chow cohomology classes on complete toric varieties. These objects fit into the framework of tropical intersection theory developed by Allermann and Rau. Standard facts about intersection theory on toric varieties are applied to show that the definitions of tropical intersection product on tropical cycles in $\R^n$ given by Allermann-Rau and Mikhalkin are equivalent. We introduce an induced tropica…
We study the tropicalizations of Severi varieties, which we call tropical Severi varieties. In this paper, we give a partial answer to the following question, ``describe the tropical Severi varieties explicitly.'' We obtain a description of tropical Severi varieties in terms of regular subdivisions of polygons. As an intermediate step, we construct explicit parameter spaces of curves. These parameter spaces are much simpler objects than the corresponding Severi variety and they are closely related to flat degenerations of the Severi variety, which in turn describes the tropical Severi variety.…
The algebraic foundation of tropical polynomial algebra provides the framework for the geometric construction of the supplement and the reversal of tropical varieties, thereby inducing a duality of reduced tropical varieties; for classes of tropical hypersurfaces the corresponding point symmetry is obtained for their Newton polytopes and lattice polytopes.
In this article we define a natural tropicalization procedure for closed subsets of log-regular varieties in the case of constant coefficients and study its basic properties. This framework allows us to generalize some of Tevelev's results on tropical compactification as well as Hacking's result on the cohomology of the link of a tropical variety to log-regular varieties.
We introduce a package for doing tropical computations in Macaulay2. The package draws on the functionality of Gfan and Polymake while making the process as simple as possible for the end user. This provides a powerful and user friendly tool for computing tropical varieties requiring little prerequisite knowledge.
Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group. We develop a Gröbner theory for multiplicity-free $G$-algebras, as well as a tropical geometry for subschemes in a spherical homogeneous space $G/H$. We define the notion of a spherical tropical variety and prove a fundamental theorem of tropical geometry in this context. We also propose a definition for a spherical amoeba in $G/H$. Our work partly builds on the previous work of Vogiannou on spherical tropicalization and in some ways is complementary.
We use piecewise polynomials to define tropical cocycles generalising the well-known notion of tropical Cartier divisors to higher codimensions. Groups of cocycles are tropical analogues of Chow cohomology groups. We also introduce an intersection product of cocycles with tropical cycles - the counterpart of the classical cap product - and prove that this gives rise to a Poincaré duality in some cases.
We define an intersection product of tropical cycles on matroid varieties (via cutting out the diagonal) and show that it is well-behaved. In particular, this enables us to intersect cycles on moduli spaces of tropical rational marked curves $M_{0,n}$ and $M_{0,n}(\R^r, d)$. This intersection product can be extended to smooth varieties (whose local models are matroid varieties). We also study pull-backs of cycles and rational equivalence.
Tropical algebraic geometry offers new tools for elimination theory and implicitization. We determine the tropicalization of the image of a subvariety of an algebraic torus under any homomorphism from that torus to another torus.
In this paper we study tropicalization of Grassmannian and linear varieties. In particular, we study the tropical linear spaces cor- responding to the phylogenetic trees. We prove that corresponding to each subtree of the phylogenetic tree there is a point on the tropical grassmannian. We deduce a necessary and sufficient condition for it to be on the facet of the tropical linear space.
Tropical ideals, introduced in arXiv:1609.03838, define subschemes of tropical toric varieties. We prove that the top-dimensional parts of their varieties are balanced polyhedral complexes of the same dimension as the ideal. This means that every subscheme of a tropical toric variety defined by a tropical ideal has an associated class in the Chow ring of the toric variety. A key tool in the proof is that specialization of variables in a tropical ideal yields another tropical ideal; this plays the role of hyperplane sections in the theory. We also show that elimination theory (projection of var…
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.
In this paper we study a $k$-dimensional analytic subvariety of the complex algebraic torus. We show that if its logarithmic limit set is a finite rational $(k-1)$-dimensional spherical polyhedron, then each irreducible component of the variety is algebraic. This gives a converse of a theorem of Bieri and Groves and generalizes a result proven in \cite{MN2-11}. More precisely, if the dimension of the ambient space is at least twice of the dimension of the generic analytic subvariety, then these properties are equivalent to the volume of the amoeba of the subvariety being finite.
We present an algorithm for computing zero-dimensional tropical varieties using projections. Our main tools are fast unimodular transforms of lexicographical Gröbner bases. We prove that our algorithm requires only a polynomial number of arithmetic operations if given a Gröbner basis, and we demonstrate that our implementation compares favourably to other existing implementations. Applying it to the computation of general positive-dimensional tropical varieties, we argue that the complexity for calculating tropical links is dominated by the complexity of the Gröbner walk.
Tropical toric varieties are partial compactifications of finite dimensional real vector spaces associated with rational polyhedral fans. We introduce plurisubharmonic functions and a Bedford--Taylor product for Lagerberg currents on open subsets of a tropical toric variety. The resulting tropical toric pluripotential theory provides the link to give a canonical correspondence between complex and non-archimedean pluripotential theories of invariant plurisubharmonic functions on toric varieties. We will apply this correspondence to solve invariant non-archimedean Monge--Ampère equations on tori…
We give several characterizations of stable intersections of tropical cycles and establish their fundamental properties. We prove that the stable intersection of two tropical varieties is the tropicalization of the intersection of the classical varieties after a generic rescaling. A proof of Bernstein's theorem follows from this. We prove that the tropical intersection ring of tropical cycle fans is isomorphic to McMullen's polytope algebra. It follows that every tropical cycle fan is a linear combination of pure powers of tropical hypersurfaces, which are always realizable. We prove that ever…
Starting from certain rational varieties blown-up from (P^1)^N, we construct a tropical, i.e., subtraction-free birational, representation of Weyl groups as a group of pseudo isomorphisms of the varieties. Furthermore, we develop an algebro-geometric framework of tau-functions as defining functions of exceptional divisors on the varieties. In the case where the corresponding root system is of affine type, our construction yields a class of (higher order) q-difference Painleve equations and its algebraic degree grows quadratically.
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.
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…
