A tropical proof of the Brill-Noether Theorem

Abstract

We produce Brill-Noether general graphs in every genus, confirming a conjecture of Baker and giving a new proof of the Brill-Noether Theorem, due to Griffiths and Harris, over any algebraically closed field.

17 pages, 5 figures; v3: added a new Section 3, detailing how the classical Brill-Noether theorem for algebraic curves follows from Theorem 1.1. Update references, minor expository improvements