Smooth tropical surfaces with infinitely many tropical lines (Q2380818)

The author studies the tropical lines contained in smooth tropical surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) (see e.g. [\textit{J. Richter-Gebert}, \textit{B. Sturmfels} and \textit{T. Theobald}, Contemporary Mathematics 377, 289--317 (2005; Zbl 1093.14080)] for a relevant introduction to tropical geometry). Smooth tropical quadric surfaces are shown to contain two one-dimensional families of tropical lines, like in classical algebraic geometry. However, unlike the classical case, smooth non-cylindrical tropical surfaces of any degree may contain a family of tropical lines as well, and an example for an arbitrary degree is constructed in the paper. In the family of tropical lines of this example, every two lines have one-dimensional intersection, unlike tropical lines on quadric surfaces. A similar study is also partially done for tropical lines with one vertex (referred to as degenerate tropical lines). In a subsequent paper [\textit{M. D. Vigeland}, Tropical lines on smooth tropical surfaces, \url{arXiv:0708.3847}], the author constructs surfaces of arbitrary degree not containing tropical lines.