# The Geometry of Break Divisors

I’d like to continue this discussion of break divisors on graphs & tropical curves by describing an interesting connection to algebraic geometry.  In this post, I’ll explain a beautiful connection to the theory of compactified Jacobians discovered by Tif Shen, a recent Ph.D. student of Sam Payne at Yale. Continue reading

# The Combinatorics of Break Divisors

I recently gave three lectures at Yale University for the Hahn Lectures in Mathematics.  The unifying theme of my talks was the notion of break divisor, a fascinating combinatorial concept related to the Riemann-Roch theorem for graphs.  Some applications of break divisors to algebraic geometry will be discussed in a follow-up post.

Break divisors on graphs

Let $G$ be a connected finite graph of genus $g = g(G)$, where $g := |E(G)| - |V(G)| + 1$.  Our central object of study will be the notion of a break divisor on $G$.  Recall that a divisor $D$ on a graph $G$ is an assignment of an integer $D(v)$ to each vertex $v$ of $G$.   The divisor $D$ is called effective if $D(v) \geq 0$ for all $v$; in this case, we often visualize $D$ by placing $D(v)$ “chips” at $v$.  And the degree of $D$ is the sum of $D(v)$ over all vertices $v$, i.e., the total number of chips.  By analogy with algebraic geometry, we write divisors on $G$ as formal sums $D = \sum_{v \in V(G)} D(v) (v)$, i.e., as elements of the free abelian group on $V(G)$.

A break divisor on $G$ is an effective divisor $D$ of degree $g$ such that for every connected subgraph $H$ of $G$, the degree of $D$ restricted to $H$ is at least $g(H)$.  In other words, there are $g(G)$ total chips and each connected subgraph $H$ contains at least genus-of-$H$ of these chips.  One surprising fact, proved in this paper (referred to henceforth as [ABKS]), is that the number of break divisors on $G$ is equal to the number of spanning trees of $G$. Continue reading