Chip Firing Games and Tropical Geometry

Chip Firing is a certain game played on the vertices of a finite graph. I will introduce the notion of a divisor on a graph and show how the group of divisors can be used to find winning strategies for chip firing games.
The theory of divisors on graphs bears a striking resemblance to the divisor theory of algebraic curves. For instance, a graph divisor satisfies analogs of classical theorems such as the Riemann-Roch and Clifford’s Theorem. I will discuss these theorems and, time permitting, show how deeply this analogy actually runs.
No prior knowledge is required.