Tropical Chow Hypersurfaces

Abstract

Given a projective variety $X$ of codimension $k+1$ in $\mathbb{P}^n$ the Chow hypersurface $Z_X$ is the hypersurface of the Grassmannian $\operatorname{Gr}(k, n)$ parametrizing projective linear spaces that intersect $X$. We introduce the tropical Chow hypersurface $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$. This object only depends on the tropical variety $\operatorname{Trop}(X)$ and we provide an explicit way to obtain $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$ from $\operatorname{Trop}(X)$. We also give a geometric description of $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$. We conjecture that, as in the classical case, $\operatorname{Trop}(X)$ can be reconstructed from $\operatorname{Trop}(Z_X)$ and prove it for the case when $X$ is a curve in $\mathbb{P}^3$. This suggests that the tropical Chow hypersurface can be used to construct a tropical Chow variety.