Signed tropical halfspaces and convexity

Abstract

We extend the fundamentals for tropical convexity beyond the tropically positive orthant expanding the theory developed by Loho and V\'egh (ITCS 2020). We study two notions of convexity for signed tropical numbers called 'TO-convexity' (formerly 'signed tropical convexity') and the novel notion 'TC-convexity'. We derive several separation results for TO-convexity and TC-convexity. A key ingredient is a thorough understanding of TC-hemispaces - those TC-convex sets whose complement is also TC-convex. Furthermore, we use new insights in the interplay between convexity over Puiseux series and its signed valuation. Remarkably, TC-convexity can be seen as a natural convexity notion for representing oriented matroids as it arises from a generalization of the composition operation of vectors in an oriented matroid. We make this explicit by giving representations of linear spaces over the real tropical hyperfield in terms of TC-convexity.