Return to search

Tropical Severi Varieties and Applications

The main topic of this thesis is the tropicalizations of Severi varieties, which we call
tropical Severi varieties. Severi varieties are classical objects in algebraic geometry. They
are parameter spaces of plane nodal curves. On the other hand, tropicalization is an
operation defined in tropical geometry, which turns subvarieties of an algebraic torus
into certain polyhedral objects in real vector spaces. By studying the tropicalizations, it
may be possible to transform algebro-geometric problems into purely combinatorial ones.
Thus, it is a natural question, “what are tropical Severi varieties?” In this thesis, we give
a partial answer to this question: we obtain a description of tropical Severi varieties in
terms of regular subdivisions of polygons. Given a regular subdivision of a convex lattice
polygon, we construct an explicit parameter space of plane curves. This parameter space
is a much simpler object than the corresponding Severi variety and it is closely related
to a flat degeneration of the Severi variety, which in turn describes the tropical Severi
variety.
We present two applications. First, we understand G.Mikhalkin’s correspondence theorem
for the degrees of Severi varieties in terms of tropical intersection theory. In particular,
this provides a proof of the independence of point-configurations in the enumeration
of tropical nodal curves. The second application is about Secondary fans. Secondary
fans are purely combinatorial objects which parameterize all the regular subdivisions of
polygons. We provide a relation between tropical Severi varieties and Secondary fans.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/34976
Date08 January 2013
CreatorsYang, Jihyeon
ContributorsKhovanskii, Askold
Source SetsUniversity of Toronto
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

Page generated in 0.0023 seconds