Labeled floor diagrams for plane curves (Q604441)

This paper studies floor diagrams and their application to problems in enumerative geometry. By methods of tropical geometry, many enumerative questions can be reformulated into tropical enumerative questions. This holds for example for the question of counting plane curves of a given degree and genus (resp.\ with a given number of nodes) and satisfying point conditions and tangency conditions to a line, i.e. for the (relative) Gromov-Witten invariants of the plane [\textit{G. Mikhalkin}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 18, No. 2, 313--377 (2005; Zbl 1092.14068)]. In [C. R., Math., Acad. Sci. Paris 345, No. 6, 329--334 (2007; Zbl 1124.14047)], \textit{E. Brugallé} and \textit{G. Mikhalkin} introduced floor diagrams, objects which extract the combinatorial essence of the tropical curve count. This paper lays a solid and broad foundation for the study of floor diagrams, relates them to other combinatorial objects and deduces enumerative applications. Rational curves of a fixed degree having maximal tangency to a given line and satisfying point conditions are enumerated. If we fix the number of nodes and let the degree vary, it has been conjectured that we get polynomial behaviour for large degrees [\textit{P. Di Francesco} and \textit{C. Itzykson}, Prog. Math. 129, 81--148 (1995; Zbl 0868.14029); \textit{L. Göttsche}, Commun. Math. Phys. 196, No. 3, 523--533 (1998; Zbl 0934.14038)]. The authors prove this conjecture by means of floor diagrams. Furthermore, they develop techniques to compute these node polynomials. Other proofs of the conjecture have appeared in [\textit{Y. Choi}, ``On the degree of Severi varieties'', Preprint; \textit{A.-K. Liu}, ``The algebraic proof of the universality theorem'', \url{arXiv:math/0402045}; \textit{Y.-j. Tzeng}, ``A proof of the Göttsche-Yau-Zaslow formula'', \url{arXiv:1009.5371}]. A bijection between floor diagrams and trees is established which consequently leads to formulas for Gromov-Witten invariants in terms of certain tree statistics. Several conjectures and open problems are presented.