Fibers of tropicalization (Q1024200)

This paper concerns a folklore theorem stating that the tropicalization map for subvarieties of tori is surjective, namely, that each point of the tropical variety can be lifted to a point of the original variety. This result has been stated by \textit{D. Speyer} and \textit{B. Sturmfels} [Adv. Geom. 4, No. 3, 389--411 (2004; Zbl 1065.14071)], though a gap was found, which motivated the author to write the present paper. The paper includes a footnote explanation of this gap, as well as bibliographic references for various approaches aimed at closing it in certain cases. This paper considers the setting of subvarieties of tori defined over an algebraically closed field with nonarchimedean valuation. This includes the fields of generalized power series over an algebraically closed field in arbitrary characteristic, as well as the perhaps more common Puiseux series when the coefficient field has characteristic zero. In this generality, the author not only rigorously proves the widely-believed aforementioned surjectivity result, but shows that something even stronger holds: the fibers of the tropicalization map are Zariski-dense.