Dhruv Bhatia, University of Washington
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PDL C-401
A tropical curve is a graph (+ some extra data) that occurs as combinatorial information associated with the limiting object of a family of smooth curves. I will tell the story about how understanding the moduli space M^{trop}_{g, n} of these gadgets can help us understand a small part of the cohomology of M_{g, n}, the moduli space of smooth projective curves. Along the way, we'll do some mixed Hodge theory and also meet this little guy:
