Tropical Lines on Cubic Surfaces

Abstract

Given a tropical line $L$ and a smooth tropical surface $X$, we look at the position of $L$ on $X$. We introduce its primal and dual motif which are respectively a decorated graph and a subcomplex of the dual triangulation of $X$. They encode the combinatorial position of $L$ on $X$. We classify all possible motifs of tropical lines on general smooth tropical surfaces. This classification allows to give an upper bound for the number of tropical lines on a general smooth tropical surface with a given subdivision. We focus in particular on surfaces of degree three. As a concrete example, we look at tropical cubic surfaces dual to a fixed honeycomb triangulation, showing that a general surface contains exactly $27$ tropical lines.