Effective divisor classes on metric graphs (Q2172484)

The purpose of this work is to study tropical effective loci and establish some of their basic properties. The authors introduce the notion of semibreak divisors on metric graphs, which generalizes the notion of break divisors (in degree equal to genus), and prove that every effective divisor class (of degree at most the genus) has a semibreak divisor representative. The first main result shows that for \(0\leq d\leq g\), there exists a semibreak divisor in each class in the corresponding locus of effective divisor classes \(W_d\), also providing an algorithm to compute a representative. The proof relies on the theory of submodular functions. Semibreak divisors provide the tool to establish some basic properties of effective loci inside Picard groups of metric graphs. These are analogues of classical results for Riemann surfaces. Namely, they show the following three facts: Let \(0\leq d\leq g\) \begin{itemize} \item[(a)] \(W_d\) is a purely \(d\)-dimensional polyhedral subset of \(Pic^d(\Gamma)\); \item[(b)] The tropical Abel-Jacobi Map \(S(d):Div_+^d(\Gamma)\rightarrow Pic^d(\Gamma)\) is birational onto its image; \item[(c)] There exists an open dense subset \(U_d \subset W_d\) such that \(r(D) = 0\) whenever \([D] \in U_d\). \end{itemize}