KP solitons from tropical limits (Q2156372)

This paper is devoted to the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) solitons from tropical limits The authors study solutions to the KP equation: \[ \frac{\partial}{\partial x}\left(4p_t-6pp_x-p_{xxx}\right)=3p_{yy}, \] whose underlying algebraic curves undergo tropical degenerations. Riemann's theta function becomes a finite exponential sum that is supported on a Delaunay polytope. The authors introduce the Hirota variety which parametrizes all tau functions arising from such a sum. They compute tau functions from points on the Sato Grassmannian that represent Riemann-Roch spaces and they present an algorithm that finds a soliton solution from a rational nodal curve. This paper is organized as follows : Section 1 is an introduction to the subject. Section 2 deals with the tropical curves and Delaunay polytopes. The authors review the derivation of tropical Riemann matrices. Section 3 is devoted to Hirota varieties. Section 4 deals with the Sato Grassmannian. The latter is a device for encoding all solutions to the KP equation. Section 5 is devoted to tau functions from algebraic curves and Section 6 to nodal rational curves.