Complex and tropical counts via positive characteristic

Abstract

We study two classical families of enumerative problems: inflection lines of plane curves and theta-hyperplanes of canonical curves. In these problems the complex counts and the tropical counts disagree. Each problem suggests a prime with special behavior. On the one hand, we analyze the reduction modulo these special primes, and we prove that the complex solutions coalesce in uniform clusters. On the other hand, we observe that the counts in special characteristic and in tropical geometry match.