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 geometrynumber theory

Audience: researchers in the topic

UCSB Seminar on Geometry and Arithmetic