Towards a tropical proof of the Gieseker-Petri theorem (Q486317)

The paper under review uses tropical techniques to prove that the variety parameterizing pencils (rank 1 linear series) of any given degree on a general smooth projective curve is smooth. This is a special case of the Gieseker-Petri theorem [\textit{D. Gieseker}, Invent. Math. 66, 251--275 (1982; Zbl 0522.14015)] which says the same for arbitrary rank. The tropical approach relies on the theory of divisors on metric graphs [\textit{M. Baker} and \textit{S. Norine}, Adv. Math. 215, No. 2, 766--788 (2007; Zbl 1124.05049)] and on Baker's Specialization Lemma [\textit{M. Baker}, Algebra Number Theory 2, No. 6, 613--653 (2008; Zbl 1162.14018)]. A similar tropical approach to the Brill-Noether theorem (computing the dimension of the variety parameterizing linear series of given degree and rank on a general smooth projective curve) was previously given by \textit{F. Cools} et al. [Adv. Math. 230, No. 2, 759--776 (2012; Zbl 1325.14080)].