Convexity in Tree Spaces

Abstract

We study the geometry of metrics and convexity structures on the space of phylogenetic trees, which is here realized as the tropical linear space of all ultrametrics. The $CAT-0$ metric of Billera-Holmes-Vogtman arises from the theory of orthant spaces. While its geodesics can be computed by the Owen-Provan algorithm, geodesic triangles are complicated. We show that the dimension of such a triangle can be arbitrarily high. Tropical convexity and the tropical metric exhibit properties that are desirable for geometric statistics, such as geodesics of small depth.