Tropical secant varieties of linear spaces (Q818678)

The tropical semiring consists of the real numbers \(\mathbb{R}\), with tropical addition \(a \oplus b = \min(a,b)\) and tropical multiplication \(a \otimes b = a+ b\). Then \(\mathbb{R}^{d+1}\) is a tropical semimodule, with corresponding projective space \(\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^d = \mathbb{R}^{d+1}/(1,\dots,1)\). If \(L\) is an ordinary linear subspace, then its \(k\)th tropical secant variety in \(\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^d\) is defined by \[ S^k(L) := \{v_1 \otimes \cdots \otimes v_{k+1} \mid v_i \in L\}. \] Here, it is assumed that \((1,\dots,1) \in L\), so that one can mod out by this vector to work in \(\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^d\). Tropical secant varieties correspond to log-limits of toric varieties. Another application is to the Barvinok subcomplex. A \(d \times n\) matrix \(M = (m_{ij})\) has tropically rank-one if \(m_{ij} + m_{kl} = m_{il} + m_{kj}\) for all \(i,j,k,l\). Then \(M\) has Barvinok rank at most \(k\) if it is expressible as the sum of \(k\) matrices of tropically rank-one; these comprise a \(k\)th secant variety, whose interesting component is a subcomplex of the secondary polytope of the product \(\Delta_{d-1} \times \Delta_{n-1}\) of two simplices. The \(k\)th secant variety of a generic line in \(d\)-space is also related here to a complex arising from the cyclic polytope \(C(2k,d-1)\). [Two typographical errors have been silently corrected by the reviewer here.]