Amoebas of algebraic varieties and tropical geometry

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 ...

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...

\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 abo...

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 estab...

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 wa...

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.

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 sub...

The paper consists of lecture notes for a mini-course given by the authors at the G\"okova 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.

This paper is a report based on the results obtained during a three months internship at the University of Pittsburgh by the first author and under the mentorship of the second author. The notion of an amoeba of a subvariety in a torus $(\mathbb{C}^*)^n$ has been extended to subvarieties of the general linear group $GL_n(\mathbb{C})$ by the second author and Manon. In this paper, we show some basic properties of these matrix amoebas, e.g. any such amoeba is closed and the con...

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.