Tropical Arithmetic and Optimization
Study the tropical semiring, tropical linear algebra, and tropical linear programming; connect to classical LP via the min-plus structure.
- Suitable for
- Master's thesis
- Supervision
- Zafeirakis Zafeirakopoulos
The tropical semiring \((\mathbb{R} \cup \{\infty\}, \oplus, \otimes)\) replaces the classical operations with:
\[a \oplus b = \min(a, b), \qquad a \otimes b = a + b\]Addition becomes minimum; multiplication becomes classical addition. The name “tropical” honors the Brazilian mathematician Imre Simon, who studied this structure.
Why it matters
Tropical algebra is the algebraic shadow of classical algebra under logarithmic degeneration: as \(t \to \infty\), the map \(x \mapsto -\log_t x\) sends products to sums and sums to minima. This connection means:
- Tropical polynomials are piecewise-linear functions
- Tropical varieties are polyhedral complexes (fans and subdivisions)
- Tropical linear programming is equivalent to shortest-path problems — solvable in polynomial time
Classical linear programming can be viewed as the limit of a family of tropical LPs, and duality in LP corresponds to tropical duality.
Tropical linear algebra
A tropical matrix product \((A \otimes B)_{ij} = \min_k(A_{ik} + B_{kj})\) — this is the matrix product in the min-plus semiring. It computes shortest paths (Floyd–Warshall is tropical matrix exponentiation).
A tropical linear system \(A \otimes x = b\) (tropical dot product equals \(b\)) is not always uniquely solvable; the theory of tropical rank and tropical bases extends classical linear algebra in a piecewise-linear setting.
Tropical varieties
The tropical variety of a polynomial \(f(x_1,\ldots,x_n)\) is the set of points where the minimum in the tropical polynomial is achieved at least twice. This is a polyhedral fan, and Speyer & Sturmfels showed it equals the limit of the classical variety under logarithmic degeneration.
Goal
Implement tropical arithmetic, tropical matrix multiplication, and a tropical linear programming solver (as a shortest-path problem). Explore at least one connection to classical optimization or algebraic geometry.
References
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D. Speyer and B. Sturmfels. Tropical Mathematics. Mathematics Magazine, 82(3):163–173, 2009. DOI 10.1080/0025570x.2009.11953615 · PDF (author’s arXiv preprint)
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T. Bogart, A. N. Jensen, D. Speyer, B. Sturmfels, and R. R. Thomas. Computing tropical varieties. Journal of Symbolic Computation, 42(1–2):54–73, 2007. DOI 10.1016/j.jsc.2006.02.004 · arXiv:math/0507563