English

The Brill-Noether rank of a tropical curve

Algebraic Geometry 2014-04-02 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

We construct a space classifying divisor classes of a fixed degree on all tropical curves of a fixed combinatorial type and show that the function taking a divisor class to its rank is upper semicontinuous. We extend the definition of the Brill-Noether rank of a metric graph to tropical curves and use the upper semicontinuity of the rank function on divisors to show that the Brill-Noether rank varies upper semicontinuously in families of tropical curves. Furthermore, we present a specialization lemma relating the Brill-Noether rank of a tropical curve with the dimension of the Brill-Noether locus of an algerbaic curve.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.6309,
  title  = {The Brill-Noether rank of a tropical curve},
  author = {Yoav Len},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.6309},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

17 pages, 4 figures; v2: changed title, updated references, minor improvements. To appear in Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics