The tropical section conjecture

Abstract: Grothendieck's section conjecture predicts that for a curve X of genus at least 2 over an arithmetically interesting field (say, a number field or p-adic field), the étale fundamental group of X encodes all the information about rational points on X. In this talk I will formulate a tropical analogue of the section conjecture and explain how to use methods from low-dimensional topology and moduli theory to prove many cases of it. As a byproduct, I'll construct many examples of curves for which the section conjecture is true, in interesting ways. For example, I will explain how to prove the section conjecture for the generic curve, and for the generic curve with a rational divisor class, as well as how to construct curves over p-adic fields which satisfy the section conjecture for geometric reasons. This is joint work with Wanlin Li, Nick Salter, and Padma Srinivasan.

algebraic geometrycombinatorics

Audience: researchers in the topic

Tropical Geometry in Frankfurt/Zoom TGiF/Z

Series comments: Description: An afternoon seminar series on tropical geometry, known as the TGiZ ("Tropical Geometry in Zoom") or the TGiF ("Tropical Geometry in Frankfurt") seminar.

Please send an email to one of the organizers at the latest one day before a session if you wish to receive the Zoom link and password.

Videos of some past talks are available on YouTube here, while some slides can be found here.