Skeletons of Prym varieties and Brill-Noether theory (Q2027519)

The authors study the tropicalization of Prym varieties. On the algebro-geometric side, the Prym variety is a principally polarized Abelian variety \(\mathrm{Pr}(X, \pi) \subset \mathrm{Pic}^0(\widetilde X)\) associated to an unramified double cover \(\pi \colon \widetilde X \to X\) of a smooth curve \(X\). The authors show that the tropicalization of \(\mathrm{Pr}(X, \pi)\) is the tropical Prym variety associated to the tropicalization of \(\widetilde X \to X\), a principally polarized tropical Abelian variety. The construction commutes with the algebro-geometric and tropical Abel-Prym maps. Analogous results have been established in [\textit{M. Baker} and \textit{J. Rabinoff}, Int. Math. Res. Not. 2015, No. 16, 7436--7472 (2015; Zbl 1332.14038)] for Jacobians of curves. In both cases, the underlying theory is that of non-Archimedean uniformization of Abelian varieties. In the second part of the paper, the authors study the dimension of Prym-Brill-Noether loci. That is, the intersection of (a shift to \(\mathrm{Pic}^{2g - 2}(\widetilde X)\) of) Prym varieties with Brill-Noether loci. The dimension of such a Prym-Brill-Noether locus for a general base curve \(X\) was established in [\textit{G. E. Welters}, Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 18, 671--683 (1985; Zbl 0628.14036)]. The authors extend this by considering the special locus in which the base curve \(X\) has in addition fixed gonality \(k\). For a general unramified double cover in the \(k\)-gonal locus they obtain a new upper bound on the dimension of the Prym-Brill-Noether locus. This is done via degeneration to a chain of loops -- a class of tropical curves on which the divisor theory has been worked out in great detail, and that provides the authors with enough control to describe the tropical Prym-Brill-Noether loci. Using this description, the upper bound on the dimension of the algebro-geometric Prym-Brill-Noether loci then follows from combining the first part of the current paper with two bounds relating algebro-geometric invariants with their tropical counterparts: first, on the rank of line bundles provided by Baker's specialization lemma [\textit{M. Baker}, Algebra Number Theory 2, No. 6, 613--653 (2008; Zbl 1162.14018)]; and second, on the dimension of closed subsets of abelian varieties given by Gubler's Bieri-Groves type theorem [\textit{W. Gubler}, Invent. Math. 169, No. 2, 321--376 (2007; Zbl 1153.14036)].