Abstract
The spaceT d;n ofn tropically collinear points in a fixed tropical projective space\(\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^{d - 1} \) is equivalent to the tropicalization of the determinantal variety of matrices of rank at most 2, which consists of reald×n matrices of tropical or Kapranov rank at most 2, modulo projective equivalence of columns. We show that it is equal to the image of the moduli space\(\mathcal{M}_{0,n} (\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^{d - 1} , 1)\) ofn-marked tropical lines in\(\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^{d - 1} \) under the evaluation map. Thus we derive a natural simplicial fan structure forT d;n using a simplicial fan structure of\(\mathcal{M}_{0,n} (\mathbb{T}\mathbb{P}^{d - 1} , 1)\) which coincides with that of the space of phylogenetic trees ond +n taxa. The space of phylogenetic trees has been shown to be shellable by Trappmann and Ziegler. Using a similar method, we show thatT d;n is shellable with our simplicial fan structure and compute the homology of the link of the origin. The shellability ofT d;n has been conjectured by Develin in [1].
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Markwig, H., Yu, J. The space of tropically collinear points is shellable. Collect. Math. 60, 63–77 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03191216
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03191216